Why Wall Street can use Ethereum without betting on ETH

Wall Street can use tokenized assets without choosing ETH to back its trades. That distinction matters to Vitalik Buterin’s November 8 case for holding ETH: BlackRock’s dollar fund BUIDL lets eligible institutions post yield-bearing fund tokens as collateral instead.

Writing as @VitalikButerin, he argued that ETH’s monetary properties deserve more attention than valuation through fee burn. BUIDL’s established collateral framework with OKX and Standard Chartered describes a route for eligible clients to support trading with yield-bearing fund claims rather than ETH.

@VitalikButerin explicitly supported keeping EIP-1559 and its burn. His argument shifts the emphasis of ETH’s value proposition.

In a follow-up post, @VitalikButerin linked the usefulness of holding ETH to assets issued natively on Ethereum’s base layer. More assets could give holders more opportunities to convert between ETH and other instruments or use ETH as collateral.

BUIDL gives institutions a dollar collateral route

The institutional comparison predates the November thread. In an April 28, 2026 announcement, Standard Chartered described a framework allowing OKX VIP and institutional clients to post BUIDL in off-exchange custody at the bank while trading on OKX Middle East.

OKX’s explanation also describes an on-exchange route: BUIDL can be deposited and used as yield-bearing margin. In both routes, the stated benefit is that dollar yield continues while the fund tokens support trading.

The underlying exposure is cash, U.S. Treasury bills and repurchase agreements. BlackRock’s March 2024 launch terms described BUIDL as seeking a stable $1 token value, with transfers between pre-approved investors.

These features differ from the decentralization-based case Buterin makes for ETH. BUIDL is a permissioned claim on a managed dollar fund, with custody and eligibility requirements. An institution choosing it as margin is choosing that exposure and infrastructure, rather than expressing a preference to hold ETH.

The custody roles also differ. The original fund launch named BNY Mellon custodian of underlying assets; the later framework places posted fund tokens with Standard Chartered. Those are separate layers of the arrangement.

Nor is BUIDL an Ethereum-only product. Securitize’s November 2025 expansion announcement listed seven existing networks and added a BNB Chain share class. The April OKX and Standard Chartered releases do not identify eligible chains, collateral haircuts, client counts or the amount posted under their arrangement.

The announced collateral route therefore illustrates a choice. Without utilization figures, it does not establish displacement of ETH or a quantified effect on its price.

The scale of Ethereum’s hosted assets makes collateral preference consequential, even as those balances contract. RWA.xyz’s Ethereum dashboard showed $15 billion in distributed asset value on November 9, down 12.1% over 30 days. Ethereum’s stablecoin market capitalization was $139 billion, down 6.1% over the same period.

CryptoSlate’s July Ethereum overview already identified the gap between hosted assets and ETH value capture. The November argument sharpens one part of that test: whether access to more instruments makes ETH more desirable to retain as collateral.

BUIDL shows why the distinction matters: tokenized finance can make a dollar claim more useful as collateral without making ETH the asset an institution chooses to hold.