Jan van Eck, CEO of investment management firm VanEck, recently described Ethereum as “the Wall Street token” while talking about its surge this quarter.

In an interview with Fox News Business this week, van Eck said that with the rise of stablecoins, every bank and financial services company now needs infrastructure to process them.

Ethereum’s Wall Street Moment

van Eck explained that if one person wants to send stablecoins, the recipient’s bank must either handle that transaction directly or rely on another institution to do so. According to van Eck, the real winners in this transition will be the blockchains that provide the foundation for these transactions.

He believes Ethereum, or other networks built on its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) methodology, will be central to driving this new financial architecture.

“If I want to send you stablecoins, your bank has to figure it out, or you find some other institution to do that. The winner is, who’s going to be building on these blockchains? It’s going to be Ethereum or something that uses Ethereum’s methodology, which is called EVM.”

The regulatory landscape for stablecoins has witnessed a tremendous change with the passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act), which was signed into law on July 18th this year.

As the first federal legislation of its kind, the act provides a framework to ensure stablecoins are transparent, fully backed, and safely integrated into the US financial system.

Post-Genius

The market’s reaction to GENIUS was swift. CryptoQuant recently reported that Binance’s stablecoin reserves surged from $32 billion to $36 billion shortly after the law’s approval.

Institutions are also accelerating their push into this sector. Stripe, for one, supports stablecoin payouts in over 100 countries and is developing its own Layer 1 blockchain to control payment rails. Circle, fresh off a successful IPO, is expanding beyond issuance with its Circle Payment Network (CPN) and a proprietary Layer 1 where USDC will be the native asset.

Even traditional giants are adapting – Visa recently introduced stablecoin settlement APIs to support round-the-clock global payments. Its rival, Mastercard, teamed up with OKX and Nuvei earlier this year to support global stablecoin payments, letting users spend from wallets and merchants accept USDC.

The largest risk for Bitcoin (BTC) in the event of a quantum computing breakthrough is the potential adaptation window to become resistant, VanEck’s head of digital assets research Matt Sigel wrote in a June 2 post on X.

He said banks, tech platforms, and other blockchains face the same cryptographic weakness as Bitcoin does in the context of post-quantum computing. Yet, most can patch their servers once post-quantum standards clear the National Institute of Standards and Technology process.

Sigel noted that custodians, exchanges, and even Ethereum (ETH) could introduce lattice- or hash-based signature schemes behind the scenes. Central control allows them to rotate keys and roll out patches without community input. Bitcoin lacks that lever. 

‘Window of uncertainty’

Despite believing in the ability of Bitcoin to adapt in the long run, Sigel highlighted that miners, node operators, and wallet providers must decide to run code deployed by core developers. 

That coordination historically spans years, as seen with SegWit and Taproot. “Any upgrade would require careful coordination across the community,” Sigel wrote, adding that some users already test post-quantum wallets, yet no broad agreement exists.

Because full-scale quantum hardware may arrive with little warning, Sigel identifies the primary hazard as the period between the first credible demonstration and Bitcoin’s network-wide migration to a new signature scheme. 

He warned:

“Even a single high-profile theft could cause market volatility and trigger a scramble to upgrade.” 

The analyst added that VanEck has begun studying quantum-computing equities in one of its internal funds, and the firm’s European arm launched a Quantum Technologies UCITS ETF last week, which tracks hardware and software vendors.

Furthermore, Sigel referred to Elon Musk’s recent announcement that X will feature “Bitcoin-level encryption.”

Sigel wrote that Musk may reference Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 151 and 324, which encrypt peer-to-peer traffic but do not alter signature math. He said the remark shows Bitcoin’s present model still rates as strong until quantum machines cross the threshold.

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