Crypto Traders Are Already Placing Bets on Ethereum’s ‘Shanghai Hard Fork’

Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer at the digital-asset management firm Arca: “Most investors have heard of blockchain now and want to somehow make money if blockchain succeeds. For the last five years, almost every investor has tried to find different ways to express that theme. But for the first time ever, we’re coming out of a bear market with real product market fit,” which includes four areas: bitcoin, stablecoins, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi). “If you want to express all of those areas of blockchain with one investment, it would be Ethereum. It has wrapped bitcoin, the largest stablecoin presence, the largest NFT presence and the largest DeFi presence,” he said, adding: “In some ways, ETH is basically a crypto index now.” Dorman said he wouldn’t worry about the potential sell-off pressure from unlocking staked ETH following the upgrade: “There might be some pent-up demand to get liquidity from those who have had no liquidity for the last six or so months, but that will easily be replaced by people who didn’t stake the first time because they needed liquidity.”