Tom Lee Says Ethereum Needs More Privacy Before '$100 Trillion' Moves On-Chain — New Startup Aims To Deliver It

• EthSystems launches with anchor backing from Bitmine, Sharplink, and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.
• The company is developing privacy technologies that will allow banks and asset managers to trade on Ethereum without revealing trade information or client identities.
• EthSystems is the third Ethereum Foundation spin-out organization, following Ethlabs and Ethereum Institutional.

Bitmine (BMNR) Chairman Tom Lee said on Tuesday that institutional-grade privacy is a prerequisite for large-scale asset migration to Ethereum (ETH), as the new engineering and research company EthSystems was launched.

"The next $100 trillion of assets won't migrate on-chain without it," Lee said, calling EthSystems "exactly the kind of foundational investment Bitmine is making to accelerate Ethereum's evolution as institutional financial infrastructure."

EthSystems said it is anchor-funded by Bitmine Immersion Technologies, Sharplink (SBET), Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, and other community backers. The company added that it was developing technology that enables banks, asset managers and other regulated institutions to conduct financial transactions on Ethereum at scale without exposing sensitive information such as trade details or client identities.

The company was founded by Mo Jalil, Oskar Thorén and Aaryamann Challani,  the team behind the Ethereum Foundation’s Institutional Privacy Task Force. The founders are from the Ethereum Foundation, Goldman Sachs (GS), and Status, where they helped build the privacy infrastructure that is now used throughout the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

BMNR’s price was up more than 10% in morning trade. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around BMNR remained in the ‘neutral’ zone, while chatter stayed at ‘normal’ levels over the past day.

Filling Ethereum's Missing Layer

EthSystems is starting out with a year of open-source work already published at ethsystems.org and relationships built directly with central banks, regulators, tier-one banks, and asset managers, the company said.

Institutions are already trying out stablecoins, tokenized assets and settlement on Ethereum, but the company said meaningful adoption is about more than just access to the network. EthSystems will allow each party to a transaction to view only what they are permitted to see while retaining decentralization and security principles of the Ethereum blockchain.

Commenting on it, Sharplink Chief Executive Officer Joseph Chalom said Ethereum's value "compounds as more financial activity moves onto it," but added that this depends on institutions being able to use the network while preserving privacy. 

Lubin, who is also founder and CEO of Consensys, said he’d seen other teams pitch “permissioned systems with extra steps” to institutions under the guise of privacy technologies, but claimed the EthSystems team understood the difference. "They have a year of shipped work to show for it, and the discipline to publish the work as they go," Lubin said.

EthSystems CEO Mo Jalil said that privacy was "the requirement" for institutions, not just a feature, calling it "the difference between Ethereum holding billions today and running trillions tomorrow."

Spinout From The Ethereum Foundation

EthSystems is joining two other organizations that recently branched out from the Ethereum Foundation. One, Ethlabs, which is advancing Ethereum’s core protocol and infrastructure, and secondly, Ethereum Institutional, which is leading institutional engagement and market intelligence. 

Ethereum’s price was up over 5% in the last 24 hours. On Stocktwits, it was the top trending ticker. Retail sentiment around ETH remained in the ‘bullish’ zone, while chatter stayed at ‘normal’ levels over the past day. 

Read also: Circle Has A Message For Stablecoin Rivals: We Are ‘Playing The Long Game’

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