This is a recorded interview/panel (YouTube) featuring Joe Lubin, hosted/ uploaded by Dr. Violet Howard (Oct 17, 2025). The discussion centers on whether Ethereum can 'flip' Bitcoin (the "flippening"), positioning Bitcoin as "digital gold" and Ethereum as "digital oil" or a broader programmable trust layer. Lubin contrasts top-down (Bitcoin-as-religion) versus bottom-up (Ethereum/DeFi) approaches, predicts widespread "user-generated civilization" on Layer-2s like Linea, highlights institutional adoption (DTCC, NASDAQ, Swift Ledger), and argues Ethereum's ecosystem and technology give it a large lead and growth potential beyond Bitcoin.
Questions this video answers
October 17, 2025
11,500 banks
$20 trillion
21 million
Chapters
There's one true way, it's Bitcoin and only Bitcoin. That's a religion.
In your opinion, will there be a flippening?
If Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is digital oil. It's going to be a lot bigger than Bitcoin.
You think that is it the best to wait and hold even with a 80% decline?
Satoshi showed up, invented decentralized trust because there was something wrong that he they perceived essentially it was the way everything around us was constructed. Top down command and control authorities, overlords, imbued intermediaries with power intermediaries trusted third parties, maintained ledgers of ownership and and privileges. And you need to have that sort of organization in order to do important things in order to build a civilization. But that is, that's an overlord generated civilization. The reason we built Ethereum, bottom up trust layer, decentralized finance. And now we can use that infrastructure to disintermediate those who are there already or enable them to do things better. In terms of Lamina 1 and Linea, we are now at a point where content can be created in a user generated fashion. So my prediction for the future is that we will have user generated civilization and user generated content on on Linea and other places.
As an Ethereum DAT Co directly competing with Solana Cos. Which is almost Ethereum directly competing with Solana as much there's a yield product sold for about tens of billions of dollars that is 16% which is the Solana validator yield to the minimum versus the 5% that you said, you know, Tom Lee benchmark which is, you know, sort of just acquire and, and yield. How do you think these two things compete while there's already a massive competition of scale with Solana and Ethereum?
I don't really think there's a competition. I think Ethereum is in its lane. Ethereum's lane is wide and maybe it's multiple lanes that move in a bunch of directions. Ethereum is a much bigger, much more mature technology and ecosystem. Ethereum has been recognized now by the financial industry to the dominant choice of technology. Solana's a cool technology, it's a cool ecosystem. I think it needs to find a new meta. Its previous meta was exciting but may not be serving it well and people well. But Solana will survive and it will thrive. On Monday I was in Frankfurt, the CEO of Swift, a cooperative, the largest dao in the World, a cooperative, 11,500 banks announced that they're building Swift Ledger. He didn't say Ethereum technology. He didn't say linea I can and.
That'S big news.
They had to soft roll that announcement. But what happened after his announcement was he got a standing ovation. He got positive feedback from central banks and major banks and said I believe the sentiment was thank you for doing this. It's about time, is about time to bring the two streams, DeFi and Tradfi together so that we can all just be fi. And so we're building technology for the banking industry now. Dtcc, the equity, the securities repository for the United States, they have been building on Ethereum already. So they announced that their platform for real time tokenization of collateral again built on consensus Ethereum technology that went live a little while ago. NASDAQ just announced that they're tokenizing all their equity in collaboration with the SEC and the DTCC on consensus Ethereum technology. So we've got a big lead. We've been around for a longer time. We've been up nonstop for 10 years. Solana is going to do great things will be in maybe some overlapping niches or different niches and the, I think the Ether DAT companies have a big better shot in the near and medium term of being more solid, of earning more yield. And so we, we'll see.
How is the question like because it's a 16% visible yield while you're officially.
Claiming 5 so I wasn't claiming 5% yield. I was claiming that it would be uncomfortable possibly for the Ethereum ecosystem if Ethereum DAT companies got above 5% ownership of the total monetary base.
Gotcha.
But we can, we can significantly exceed 5% risk adjusted yield.
What do you think about the philosophy going into when Satoshi, where you started, came up with the non inflatable asset Bitcoin and created this new, you know, new financial world for us and now we are wrapping that asset into an inflatable economy of issuing new shares and raising more capital and advocating it on the top of the vice, which includes me as a equal sinner by the way. So what's the philosophical stance of legends like yourself and others?
I've been a deep Bitcoiner since early 2011. Big fan. And Satoshi invented decentralized trust, showed us how to do it. And 21 million was kind of arbitrary. It was quickly doubled when Litecoin showed up. It was then trebled when Namecoin showed up, then peercoin and then all sorts of protocols. Yes, there's one true way it's bitcoin and only bitcoin. That is reification of a Beautiful set of ideas. That's a religion. And what we need are lots of protocols that subserve different functions that interoperate with one another, that are accepted because of their different functionality into the systemically important systems of the world, into the frivolous systems of the world, into different political philosophies. You're not going to have the same kind of blockchains in North Korea that you have in Singapore or the United States of America. They'll have different purposes, I think. And so we're builders, we're just trying to identify problems.
There are quite numerous ideas about crypto winter coming and as before, many expect 80% decline on Bitcoin, on Ethereum. Do you think that. Is it the best to wait and hold even with a 80% decline?
I'm not licensed to provide financial advice. Are you licensed?
I don't think Joe can comment on the price of Ethereum and Bitcoin. So I'm going to have to.
Not on the price, but actually what strategy do you think is, is the best?
If you believe in bitcoin, don't sell your bitcoin. It's going to be the future of money. I mean I, you know, yes, I dollar cost average, invest into bitcoin, do.
Your own research, is a good strategy.
So my question is not to him for financial advice, a little bit provocative and maybe a summary of the discussion. In your opinion, will there be a flippening?
Oh yeah, I'm on record. So there's $20 trillion of gold in the world. Bitcoin's a better gold. Currently, bitcoin has some other functionality. It'd be great if it did develop more functionality, if the protocol was a little more plastic. A lot of people in the bitcoin ecosystem believe bitcoin is finished and perfect. So if it may not get quite as expressive and powerful as Ethereum. So if bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is digital oil, or it is this new trustware that will fix all the problems in software. And ether is a new kind of commodity, a virtual trust commodity. And if you re architect all the systems of the world on decentralized rails, what will adding guaranteed execution and verifiability and the ability to, you know, do all that with all of your transactions, all of your agreements, all of your processes, it's essentially going to massively accelerate, massively grow the economy. So that's, I don't know how valuable that's going to be, but it's going to be a lot, a lot bigger than Bitcoin.
