The Ether Machine, led by CEO David Merin, announces a $1.5B SPAC IPO. The firm holds 400K ETH, making it the largest Ethereum treasury holder globally.
00:00As Ethereum continues to emerge as the backbone of the new-look decentralized economy,
00:05one company is giving institutional investors a direct and purpose-built on-ramp to the future
00:11of finance. With a laser focus on staking and ETH-denominated yields, the Ether machine is not
00:17only participating in the Ethereum ecosystem, it is helping to actively shape it. Co-founder and
00:22CEO of the Ether machine, David Maron, joins us now. It is great to have you here, David.
00:27Appreciate your time. Good morning.
00:28Thank you. Good morning. It's wonderful to be here.
00:31Of course. So let's start with a bit of an introduction to the company, what it's all
00:35about, and why do you feel right now is really the right time to launch a pure-play Ethereum
00:41product like this?
00:44Absolutely. So the Ether machine is a dedicated, institutional-focused vehicle to provide public
00:52market investors access to Ethereum. We created it from scratch in a de novo entity with a
00:59team of the world's leading experts at driving this to really provide public market investors
01:07with the best way to own this dynamic asset that is Ethereum, which, in our opinion, requires
01:13active management to properly capitalize on it.
01:15Let's make this make sense for people that have a familiarity with Bitcoin and Ethereum,
01:22but maybe don't really understand the key structural differences in terms of a decentralized future.
01:29What does Ethereum as a core product offer that maybe other names in the space don't?
01:33They're really important differentiators here, right?
01:36Yeah, absolutely. So maybe I'll focus on Bitcoin first, because I think Bitcoin and Ethereum are really the only two maximally decentralized protocols out there.
01:47Bitcoin is best thought of as digital gold, right? I mean, it's really good for transferring value between one person and another, whereas Ethereum is a platform for general-purpose digital ownership, right?
02:04And, you know, with the regulatory clarity we've started to see emerge over the past week really out of DC, now is the time that developers can really start to
02:17ramp up these use cases and help transition the global economy onto these digital rails to create the next generation of the internet, right?
02:28And you're just seeing this right now with things like there's been $9 trillion of stable point volume in 2025 alone, 80% of which has been settling on Ethereum,
02:39obviously rapidly growing, and it's not even really integrated into the rails of a bunch of these major financial institutions yet, or Web2 platforms.
02:46Of course, we expect that to accelerate in the years to come here, but really that's just the beginning, right?
02:52Stable points are just the first expression of called tokenized digital ownership out there.
02:58You know, there's $240 billion of tokenized assets out there, 90% of which are on Ethereum, but really when you think about kind of the assets that exist today, that's really just getting started, right?
03:09I mean, as you think about things like AI coming online, et cetera, right?
03:15These are obviously going to be the rails for ownership of the next generation of the internet.
03:21And we think that's the era we're rapidly entering with this regulatory clarity.
03:25So ETH is up 23% over the last week, it's up 75% off of its June 22nd lows.
03:33What does that mean for the company?
03:35Look, you know, we launched this week with $1.6 billion of committed capital, making us the largest Ethereum treasury company out there.
03:48And look, as this ecosystem grows, we think there's a phenomenal opportunity for growth on our end as well.
03:55Right. And I think what you're seeing there is really a reflection of the fundamentals rapidly improving as we get this regulatory clarity through things like the Genius Act and the Clarity Act, et cetera, that have been working their way through D.C.
04:12And what do you feel most sets Ether Machine apart from other ETH-focused products, ETH-focused funds or staking platforms that are already in the space?
04:23I think there's a few different things.
04:28So one, we are a lean team.
04:30It's a small team, but it's a small team of dedicated and focused full-time experts.
04:35And I don't really think you would find a team like this out there with pioneers in things like staking and DeFi focused on driving this kind of clean institutional vehicle for public market ownership.
04:49You know, we purpose-built this vehicle for this moment in the space because we have strong conviction that this is the way that public market investors should own the future of the Internet.
05:06Break down for me some of the ways that you're able to generate the, what I know you say, market-leading ETH-denominated yields.
05:14What does that process look like?
05:16Absolutely.
05:17So there's really two core elements here.
05:22You know, one is called more technical and the other is more financial, right?
05:27So on the technical front, our CTO was one of the pioneers of Ethereum staking.
05:33He'll be engaged in driving a process on both staking and restaking, basically.
05:39Think about it as leveraging that security generated by the Ethereum blockchain, not just to get to consensus on the transactions on Ethereum, but to provide more general purpose security, digital security, right?
05:52So we'll do that.
05:53That will generate yield on our treasury.
05:58But also, on the more financial part, obviously, we have a head of DeFi who we think will be engaged in driving optimal risk-adjusted returns in DeFi on that treasury as well.
06:13And then also, we'll look to leverage some of the capital markets activities we've seen other players like MicroStrategy, Pioneer, and Bitcoin.
06:23Why is ETH a must-have asset for modern investors?
06:28ETH is the future of the internet, right?
06:33So Web 1.0 was around read-only, right?
06:38Think back to websites in the 90s.
06:40Web 2.0 was around writing on the internet.
06:44This is social media where you could share your own content.
06:47And, you know, like others in the space, we think that Web 3.0 is going to be focused on ownership of the internet, right?
06:53And ETH is the platform for digital ownership.
06:57You know, with more than 90% of the value of tokenized assets being there.
07:03And look, I think if investors want to own a piece of this future, the next wave of the internet, they need ETH exposure.
07:14And finally, before I let you go, where do you see Ether Machine being in even just the next, let's say, three to five years, which in some regards is not a very long amount of time, but the technology is changing.
07:26So three to five years is a long time in some ways.
07:29And what role do you want?
07:30Do you want the company to play in the future of Ethereum itself?
07:34Yeah, look, I think we hope to build a pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem here, which we also hope to be a pillar of the U.S. capital.
07:43So that's our medium term goal.
07:45Might sound a little ambitious, but we're optimistic.
07:50All right, David, thanks a lot for being here.
07:52Congratulations on all of the success.
07:54We'll continue to track both the company and the incredible performance as of late of Ethereum.
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