Ethereum Is Courting Wall Street... and SWIFT Just Made a Big Move | Ft. Special Guest Ben Crypto

Everyone keeps asking, "When is Wall Street finally going to embrace blockchain?" Well, I think we got our answer this week. I'm Lauren Wixom and you're watching the Boston Blockchain Beat. [music] Swift just announced it's rolling out blockchain powered payment systems with 17 global banks across six continents. Now, if you don't work in finance, you might be wondering, okay, what even is Swift?

Swift is essentially the messaging network banks used to move money around the world. It's one of the biggest pieces of financial infrastructure on the planet. And now, it's embracing blockchain. For years, people said blockchain would replace traditional finance. Instead, traditional finance seems to be saying, "We'll just use the technology."

Honestly, the future probably isn't banks versus blockchain. It's banks using blockchain. And now it's time to introduce someone I'm sure you've come across if you spent any time on YouTube and you're in the crypto space. Uh from daily market updates to altcoin deep dives, he's built one of the go-to channels for keeping up with what's happening in crypto. He's also joining us this September as a speaker at Boston Blockchain Week.

Please welcome Ben Crypto. Ben, what is up?

Not too much. It's good to uh good to see you again. I'm looking forward to the conference. finally getting on stage here for a speaker panel. Looking forward to that as well.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah. No, this is going to be great. I'm excited to see what you are going to be talking about on the Boston Blockchain Week stage. It's exciting. So, I know you've been coming to Boston Blockchain Week for pretty much since we started, right?

I joined the second year. You guys took it over and then this is my fifth straight year.

Awesome. All right. Well, like you said, this is your fifth year coming to this event. So, what keeps bringing you back? It's it's I just like kind of the size of it.

It's more, you know, a medium-sized conference. I've always found that those are better at networking. You can actually sort of target specific people in teams. Then you don't just talk to them once and never see them again. You can see them day one, day two, day three.

Um, it's obviously New England. I'm from Boston about 40 minutes away from where the show is. So, perfect location for me. And I think this is pretty much the only crypto conference, not just in Boston, but in all of New England. So, you got to represent, got to keep the uh, you know, sort of promote the the local crypto culture.

And I like how it's the conference goes on pretty much every year. I found even some of the like down years in crypto. This conference has been even bigger like the 2022 crypto um at blockchain Boston blockchain week. That was a big one. I remember the market was really down then.

That was the first year I went. Then this year this is shaping up to be probably your biggest conference ever. It's definitely going to be bigger than the last two years. Last year Bitcoin was basically at an all-time high during the conference. This one's going to be bigger.

And then even two years ago, Bitcoin was at close to an all-time high for that year right there. And again, this year it's going to be bigger. So I I think people kind of get a little less, you know, when the market is down, people just focus more on the actual projects talking with teams. It's less just less about let's go to this, you know, fancy far away conference and party and spend money. It's actually about the infrastructure and just who's building talking to teams.

No. Yeah. That's the one thing that I love about this event too is like like you mentioned like it's so much easier because of the size of it and we are growing like we do anticipate to become like the next you know south by Southwest except it'll be like north by northeast. I do love the friendships that I have formed being a part of this community and going to the event every year and like obviously like I met you and like you know I've gotten to know you over the the past couple years. Yeah, it attracts a lot of good highquality people, high quality teams and just the size and the layout of the event, the location Boston, you know, because of the different people and it's not huge and it's not too small either.

It just allows for better conversations. Yeah, it's obviously always great seeing you guys as well. This one conference, I'd say maybe 70 80% of the people I see each year I keep seeing the next year. Very few people drop off. Other conferences you just see most people once and they want to go to the next new shiny event, some far away place.

Not Boston Week, people stick with it. Couldn't agree more. Obviously, you're on YouTube, you're a content creator, and that's been, you know, a pretty successful thing for you. So, what's the biggest mistake that newer crypto investors are making today?

Um, a couple different things. So, number one, they're always, you know, tying it with the whole shiny new thing uh narrative I just mentioned. When it comes to invest, people are always kind of they have a hot sector, they will invest in that, they'll be seeing decent profits, and then there's always some new hot sector the next month, the month after, and then they [music] just rotate back into that. The sector stays hot for a week, two weeks, a month, and then capital flows out of there, goes back into the original sector. So, if they stop trying to look for just the next hot thing and realize those are just going to be short-term profits and kind of park their capital in more long-term investments, that's a good thing.

And another thing, sometimes um your specific uh time period, your hold period of an investment, I guess it depends on if you're a short-term or long-term trader, but a lot of times I see investors their thesis is right. Uh maybe they have a BTC long going in futures or maybe they picked a meme coin or utility coin that eventually starts popping up the trade in the first few days or even weeks might move against them and then they just kind of panic sell too soon. They don't want to go broke. going to want to lose all their capital, but then the trade turns around and their thesis turns out to be right. So, I would say just, you know, have faith in your thesis, keep doing the extensive research you're doing, but you just have to be able to stomach short-term dips and do not sell too early if you are convinced that your thesis is right.

Wow. Sounds like I have a lot to learn from you. [laughter]

Be kind of stressful. It's it's if you want to be the best, it's it's you know, good traders, yes, it's very stressful position. What's one crypto narrative or sector you think people are sleeping on heading into the next year?

So, I think the whole AI thing, I think that that's kind of peaked. It's always going to be here. It always it'll always be sort of a trendy niche sector, but AI is not going to be the next big thing, whether AI cryptos or AI stocks. I think a lot of the capital is going to flow back out out of the AI crypto sector and then it's going to flow back into sort of the sectors like depin you know cloud storage uh you know data networks infrastructure plays and then real world asset plays as well. companies like Centrifuge, uh let's see what else do we have here?

Uh Ono, um Near Protocol, uh plays like that that more about like the hardcore sort of just the actual assets itself, the physical piece of it, not just the AI, which is more of just selling kind of an idea of some future technology they use a little bit now, but the technologies going to keep being advanced. I think we're going to see rotation out of AI and then back into RWA and deepen. It's my prediction.

That's interesting. You know, AI is always such a it's always such a hot topic.

Yeah. It used to be everyone was in love with it and that it was at first people thought it was going to ruin the world. Then everyone kind of turned positive. Now you have like traders and investors who don't like that AI is stealing liquidity and capital away from crypto or from just regular tech stocks that are not part of AI. So now you're seeing a lot of animosity towards it again.

So yeah, it's not it's not all sort of sunshine and roses. It's not like everyone's thinking it is the greatest thing ever. There's pros and cons of it.

All right, Ben. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Can you tell the audience where we can follow you so we can, you know, keep track with what it is you're doing when you upload the next video and then so we can follow your adventure at Boston Blockchain Week 2026.

Sure. So, I'm on YouTube and Twitter mainly. Uh, YouTube's the big thing. So, it's just Ben Crypto Show. You can search that or just search Ben Crypto.

So, YouTube.com/benryptoshow is the full URL. And I'm also on Twitter. It is Ben Crypto Shows. The handle where you can just search Ben Crypto.

Um, I do a lot of charting, technical analysis on my Twitter and YouTube is more of long-term, you know, kind of more deep dives, fundamental analysis. I do some utility plays. I do some meme coins as well. I do just some sort of technical analysis, the top few coins, Bitcoin, Salana, Ethereum. So, I kind of cover everything.

Those are the two main things. Um, and then, yeah, you can find me there.

All right, Ben. I'm so excited to see you at Boston Blockchain Week. You guys heard it here on where to follow Ben. I'll make sure to put all his stuff down below in the description box. And yeah, thanks Ben.

We will see you at Boston Blockchain Week.

Looking forward to seeing you as well. Looking forward to the conference, seeing everyone. And if you're on the fence, definitely come. It's going to be a great time. Thanks, Lauren.

Now, here's another story that caught my attention this week. Ethereum just launched a new nonprofit focused on helping institutions better understand and build on Ethereum, which tells me something pretty interesting. Ethereum isn't just building technology anymore. It's building relationships. Banks, asset managers, governments, they're all exploring blockchain.

But they also need education, resources, trusted partners. That's exactly what this new organization is trying to become. So, as we all know, the conversation happening around Ethereum lately has just been around its future. So, what better way to combat this than for Ethereum to just lay off its staff, restructure their leadership, and create a nonprofit. So, Ethereum dropped their nonprofit last week known as Ethereum Institutional and according to CoinDesk, their goal is to become the Ethereum ecosystems front door for banks, asset managers, and other financial institutions.

Its founder says that the organization will serve as a neutral guide for enterprises exploring Ethereum, helping institutions understand the ecosystem, connect with developers and infrastructure providers, and navigate the network without promoting any single company or product. Wow, this is so cool, guys. The future is now. So, it's looking like the question now isn't will these institutions adopt blockchain, but which blockchain will institutions choose to build on? Thank you guys so much for watching today's episode of the Boston Blockchain Beat.

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and let us know your thoughts down in the comments. Do you think banks embracing blockchain is exactly what the industry needed, or is this taking crypto in a completely different direction than originally intended? And if you're planning on joining us this September for Boston blockchain week, don't forget to grab your tickets at bostonblockchainweek.com. I will leave the link below in the description box and I will see you guys in the next episode.

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