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The world of motorcycles is rapidly changing, with the rise of electric motorcycles heralding a new era of motorcycling. If you’re considering getting your first motorcycle, there’s never been a better time to join the electric revolution. Electric motorcycles are the perfect first ride for anyone entering the world of two wheels, offering numerous advantages over traditional combustion engine-powered bikes. From better control to reduced maintenance and even lower operating cost, electric motorcycles are the perfect starter bike.

This is going to be controversial for traditional riders who grew up on gassers. That’s fine. This article isn’t for them. It’s for you, a prospective rider who sees the advantages of getting around on two wheels (fun, convenience, cost, lifestyle, parking, etc.) and is trying to decide if it’s time to join up and on what type of bike.

Many folks who have been riding for years or decades will tell you that you have to learn on a gas bike. Why? Because that’s how they learned.

What a terrible reason to do something, “because that’s the way it used to be done.” We’re living in the future, congratulations! Doctors no longer prescribe arsenic to treat headaches and you no longer have to ride on a loud, leaking, and vibrating combustion chamber. You’ve got options now, and one of those options is the choice to leapfrog century-old technology and go electric right from the start.

As a relatively young rider (34, to be exact), I’ve come of age in my motorcycling journey during a time when both electric and combustion-engine bikes were readily available. And so I fortunately had the chance to compare both without being forced to fall in love with only one because it was my single option at the time like most older riders.

And that has taught me that combustion engine bikes have essentially two and only two advantages over electric motorcycles: It’s fun to run through the gears, and they can be ridden on cross-country trips for more than a couple hours without needing to stop for a charge. That’s about it.

Everything else comes up heads for electric motorcycles, especially when you’re talking about a new rider getting their first bike.

Zero FXE electric motorcycle ridden by Micah Toll
One of my Zero FXE test rides in California

Ease of control

Electric motorcycles are generally (but not always) single-speed, meaning you have no gears to shift. They aren’t automatic transmission since there isn’t any shifting, but it’s fairly analogous to comparing a car with a manual transmission to one with an automatic transmission.

Sure, it’s fun shifting. I learned to drive on a car three times my age with a stick throw so long I had to lean forward to hit first and third gear. But it was also much more to learn, complicating the process.

The same goes for learning to ride a motorcycle. If you’re new to manual transmissions, you have to learn not only how to control a motorcycle’s movement, but also how to shift gears. Those are two very different but equally important concepts and motions. Having gone through both learning processes, I can tell you that it’s just much easier to learn to ride on an electric. Without worrying about any shifting, 100% of your focus is on your riding. That means more mental energy for bike control, car awareness, road debris, lane presence, etc. Those things will eventually be second nature to the point that you don’t even think about them, but when learning to ride it is much easier to learn those things without also having to think, “Wait, that car just pulled out in front of me, did I slow enough for second gear or should I be in third before I let this clutch back out?”

The downside of the single-speed setup on e-motorcycles is that you don’t get the fun feeling of running through the gears. I do miss it sometimes, and it’s pretty much the only part of riding gas bikes that I enjoy more than electrics. But since the tradeoff is that you can repeatedly unleash the crazy performance of electric motorcycles like Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire One with its 3 second 0-60 mph time — all without needing to shift — usually makes up for it. The other saving grace here is for commuters. When you’re riding in traffic or otherwise commuting through a city with lots of starts and stops, shifting turns from something fun into an annoying chore.

Micah toll livewire motorcycle
Having tested an electric Harley on the track, I can tell you that easily and repeatedly doing 0-60 mph in three seconds is positively wild.

Speaking of ease of control, a light electric motorcycle makes a great upgrade from a powerful electric bicycle since the controls are so similar. I got started with motorcycling this very way. In 2010 I found my way into high power DIY electric bicycles – essentially e-bikes that exceeded the legal limits of traditional electric bicycles. At a certain point you want to go even faster with even more power, only to realize that you’re basically building a motorcycle on a bicycle frame.

That’s where a lot of people make the decision to just jump into real motorcycles and enjoy the added benefits of higher quality and safer components, not to mention finally being street legal again.

Many electric motorcycles forego the traditional foot lever rear brake for a hand lever instead, more closely mimicking bicycle controls. A quick note though: If you’re not in an already backwards country like the UK, you’ll find motorcycle brakes and bicycle brakes are reversed from each other, i.e., the right brake lever controls the front brake on a motorcycle. As someone who goes back and between e-bikes and e-motorcycles, often in the same day, it’s a little mental note that is important to master.

Having two hand brake levers makes an electric motorcycle even easier to control, especially for new riders that are already familiar with bicycles. Traditional motorcyclists that are used to a foot brake will usually say they prefer it, but that’s because it’s what they’re used to. Again, we have better options now because we live in the future. Hand controls are more precise. Throw a basketball at the hoop and even the least athletic among us will probably at least hit the backboard. Now try again with your foot and see how close you get. Hand control is simply more intuitive and easier.

ryvid anthem electric motorcycle first ride
Many electric motorcycles like these Ryvid Anthems use two hand brake levers.

Electric motorcycles require less maintenance

This is probably the biggest single advantage of electrics over gas bikes. And I have a lot of personal experience with it. Electric motorcycles aren’t maintenance free, but they’re pretty darn close. You’ve still got tires and brakes to keep an eye on (and a chain if you don’t have a belt drive bike), but those are few and far between issues. Gas bikes require much more frequent maintenance to keep them running well since their engines are a collection of hundreds of moving parts instead of an electric motor’s single spinning shaft.

My sister rides a 250cc bike. I ride electrics. Guess who’s bike is constantly needing work here and there to keep it running well?

If your goal with getting into motorcycling is to actually ride, then electric is probably for you. If you’d rather spend a good bit of your time wrenching instead of riding, then perhaps an engine based on 100+ year-old technology is right for you.

zero dsr/x electric motorcycle

Electric motorcycles are cheaper to operate

When it comes to daily operating costs, there’s no comparison. Electric is simply easier on your wallet.

And it’s not just the fuel. Sure, gas is expensive compared to much cheaper electricity. That’s an easy one to see the instant advantage of electric drive. But it’s all the other costs that add up too.

There are no air filters to replace. There are no periodic oil changes. There’s not a constant list of consumables that you have to keep buying in order to ride.

And depending where you live, electric motorcycles come with other benefits. I pay significantly lower monthly insurance rates because my bike is electric. Where I live, a 1,000cc-equivalent electric motorcycle has an insurance rate of a 250cc motorcycle. Many countries also offer incentives like reduced toll fares or cheaper parking permits, though you can often get away with parking motorcycles for free when they fit into smaller areas that cars can’t park.

csc rx1e

Electric motorcycles are quieter, smoother, and more comfortable to ride

Electric motorcycles offer a better ride experience because they are quieter, smoother, and more comfortable. That’s actually three benefits in one, so let’s break it down.

Electric motorcycles are quieter than combustion engine motorcycles, and this is a big advantage. You can hear things happening around you, whether that’s animals in the forest, approaching car danger, or the musings of your riding partners. Being able to carry on a conversation while riding next to a friend or with others at a stop light is a nice bonus. You can roll out in the morning without rumbling exhaust annoying your neighbors or waking the baby. A few years ago I was in LA and went on an early Sunday morning sunrise cruise through a super fancy Hollywood neighborhood on a Harley-Davidson LiveWire. I enjoyed winding through the hilly residential streets on one of Harley’s burliest and quickest motorcycles (0-60 mph in three seconds flat!) yet without waking the occupants of all the fancy houses I was drooling over. The few people awake and out on morning walks gave me a smile and wave and instead of dirty looks for riding a loud motorcycle through their neighborhoods early in the morning.

And don’t for a second buy that silly “loud pipes save lives” misconception. There are few larger fallacies in the world of motorcycles. We’ve all been in a car before, either parked or moving, only to be startled when a loud motorcycle whizzes by the door. It’s startling because we didn’t realize it was coming. Which is the whole point, and illustrates that loud pipes do nothing other than annoy people parked next to you at a red light. Cars are so sound-proof these days that even a loud motorcycle is on top of them before a driver even realizes it. You’re buying yourself a fraction of a second early warning at most, and in some cases that can be even more dangerous when a loud bike spooks a driver into doing something stupid.

And gas bike riders who are relying on their exhaust noise alerting drivers are actually at a disadvantage. Too many drivers with headphones or talking on their phones will be completely oblivious to loud motorcycles. Relying on them hearing you is a good way to get yourself hurt or killed.

As an electric motorcycle rider, I don’t wonder if drivers see or hear me. I just assume they don’t. That allows me to always ride as if I am invisible to drivers and to make defensive riding decisions accordingly. “Loud pipes” are a dangerous crutch. They don’t save lives, aware riding does.

Testing out the upcoming LiveWire S2 Del Mar

Next, electric motorcycles are smoother. Their power delivery is immediate and fairly linear. When you twist the throttle, you know exactly what you’re going to get. It doesn’t depend on your RPM level, how closely you matched your clutch speed to your engine speed, or how your carburetor is tuned for the current temperature and altitude. An electric motorcycle’s drivetrain is a precise computer-controlled machine, not a literal combustion chamber harnessing thousands of explosions to spin a wheel. That makes every movement on an electric motorcycle smoother and more predictable, which is exactly what a beginner rider needs.

Lastly, riding an electric motorcycle is more comfortable. There’s no heat source roasting your thighs or the ankle of your passenger. In traffic you aren’t sitting in a cloud of exhaust (at least not your own). Your garage doesn’t have oil stains on the ground. The bike isn’t vibrating your wrists or your family jewels (not to mention the studies that show the heat and vibration of gas motorcycles contributes to low sperm count and erectile dysfunction). Just about every aspect of the riding or ownership experience is physically more comfortable as well as healthier.

zero dsr

Future-proofing your motorcycle

When looking to the future, a combustion engine-powered motorcycle simply seems like a poor investment from a few directions.

For one thing, many countries are introducing stricter regulations against polluting vehicles. Next, electric motorcycles are constantly debuting new technological advancements. In comparison, there haven’t been many big technological advancements in combustion motorcycles in decades. The technology has basically been refined as far as engineers can take it. There’s not much more we can do with exploding gasoline in a cylinder.

But electric motorcycles, which are already outperforming combustion motorcycles, are still in their infancy. Every year we see huge leaps forward. Some new advancements can even be downloaded as new features. Try that on a gasser.

energica tesla supercharger
Energica motorcycles can fast-charge, even at Tesla Supercharger stations.

But don’t electric motorcycles suck to charge?

If you’re new to electric motorcycles or even electric vehicles in general, then you’re probably thinking that charging is a major downside.

In some rare cases, you’d be correct. For example, if you want to do motorcycle touring (riding many hundreds or even 1,000+ miles per day), then it can be burdensome on the majority of today’s electric motorcycles. It’s been done on e-motorcycles, though it takes a bit of planning.

But outside of the rare case of someone riding through multiple states in a single day, charging is actually an advantage of electric motorcycles, not a disadvantage.

If you use your motorcycle for commuting or daily transportation, a battery is simply better than a fuel tank. Since you can charge at home overnight, you start every day with a “full tank.” It’s as convenient as having a gas station in your garage, except without the smell or long lines. With a battery instead of a fuel tank, you’re never stopping to fuel up since you simply charge at home while you’re sleeping. Most electric motorcycles have ranges of hundreds of miles in the city. That means for commuters, you’re basically never worried about range or where you can find a plug since you start every morning fueled up.

Ironically, you’ll find that when used in a commuter role it is gas-powered motorcycles that end up range anxiety. They can’t fuel up at home so they always need to know where a gas station is.

energica motorcycle first ride

The traditional gas bike riders will try to tell you that because electric motorcycles aren’t as good at touring, they’d make a poor choice to own. But again, they’re wrong.

First of all, most people don’t go on several-hundred-mile touring rides that often. It’s a small minority of all motorcycle rides. For most people, finding several days or weeks to dedicate to such rides simply isn’t feasible very often. And if that’s something you really want to do once or twice a year, you can rent a gas bike to do it. That way for the other 360 days a year you ride a nicer, more convenient electric motorcycles.

As a new rider, the vast majority of your rides will be in the sub-one-hour range. You’re not going to be riding coast to coast very often in the beginning of your motorcycling journey.

Secondly, electric motorcycles actually can do touring thanks to fast charging. Several e-motorcycles now use DC Fast Charging, which refills the battery most of the way in around 35 minutes. It’s longer than a gas fill up, sure. But after a couple hours of riding, you’ll want to take a break to stretch your legs, get a coffee, drain out the last coffee, etc.

Are electric motorcycles expensive?

Purchase price and charging times are the two major areas that I hear gas bike riders cite as reasons new riders shouldn’t start with an electric motorcycle. We’ve already covered why the charging issue is baloney. Now let’s talk price tags.

Addmitely, electric motorcycles are usually still a bit more expensive than gas bikes with the same speed and power specs. It’s to be expected since a better vehicle is going to cost more. But the price gaps aren’t as big as they used to be, with the larger price gaps still on the higher performance end of the spectrum. And most new riders aren’t going to start with an ultra high performance electric motorcycle.

If you look at something like a $25,000 Energica that can hold its own against a Ducati, then yes, they’re expensive. But if you start with a much more reasonable lightweight or middleweight electric motorcycle, then the prices are more reasonable as well.

The SONDORS Metacycle, which is capable of highway speeds but is better suited for suburban or urban commuting, fluctuates between $4,000 to $6,500 depending on current sales. Newcomers like the Ryvid Anthem are priced at $7,800. And the CSC RX1E, which can reach 80 mph (130 km/h) and has a city range of around 80-100 miles (130-160 km), is priced at around US $8,500.

But if you want to go even smaller and really dip your foot in the shallow end of the electric motorcycle pool, there are mini options like the CSC City Slicker at just $2,900.

Granted, these are all available in the US as that is where the majority of our audience lives. But if you’re outside of the US then you probably have even more options for low-power and mid-power electric motorcycles.

Most of these bikes are imported from Asia anyway, and Europe and Oceania are currently being flooded with new options for cost-effective and modestly powered electric motorcycles. So while this article is a bit America-centric, rest assured that you’ve probably got some good low-cost e-motorcycle options in your neck of the woods.

An environmentally conscious decision

You’ll notice I saved this one for last. I think the environmental impact of electric motorcycles is important, since we have only one planet Earth and we all share it. But let’s be honest, most new riders are going to place more importance on the fun, convenience, and cost aspects of electric motorcycles.

Even so, you should know what a big impact on the environment is at stake here. Emissions caused by transportation are one of the leading causes of climate change. While trying to not sound too alarmist here, we are steadily destroying this planet. If you have children, they will live in a worse environment than you do now. That is a simple fact, not up for debate.

There’s a chance that if humanity works together, we can change that. I’m not yet totally convinced that our species has the collective will to achieve that level of cooperation, but it is still physically possible. And putting fewer polluting vehicles on the road is a step in that direction. Even if not for your future kids’ health, then what about yours? If I asked you to wrap your lips around the tailpipe of a combustion engine, would you do it? No, of course not. You know that’s literally cancer-causing fumes being pumped out of it. So why would you ask other people to breath in a carcinogenic cloud from your own tail pipe?

sondors metacycle

Electric motorcycles make the perfect starter bikes for new riders

So there we go, I’ve beaten this dead horse to the point of corpse desecration. The point is simple: Electric motorcycles make a better choice for new riders for so many reasons. They’re easier to learn on. They’re easier to ride. They’re cheaper and more convenient to own. They’re healthier for you and everyone around you. They’re simply better.

Despite all those benefits though, you unfortunately will probably still need to ride a gas bike, at least for a few days. If you live in the US or many other countries, you’ll still likely have to learn to ride a gas motorcycle to get your license. At least, for now.

I’ve gotten two motorcycle licenses in two countries and each time I was put on a gas bike to do it. Several years ago I got my motorcycle license in an MSF course in the US. It was two evenings of classroom instruction followed by a weekend of parking lot instruction, capped off with a parking lot exam. After years of riding in Tel Aviv without a local motorcycle endorsement (“Sorry officer, I didn’t know…”) I finally went through the process internationally too. There it involved 12 classes of combined parking lot and street-riding instruction, followed by both a parking lot and a street-riding exam.

In both cases I was put on a gas bike to do my instruction and testing. As much as I’ve harped on the advantages of electric motorcycles, I don’t hate that I had to learn and demonstrate proficiency on a gas bike multiple times. It’s allowed me to occasionally borrow gas bikes from friends or family. And if I ever need to do an action movie sequence where I kick someone off a motorcycle and hijack it to chase down a bad guy, chances are it’s still going to be a gas bike for the next few years until electric motorcycles eventually become the majority.

So it’s not a bad skill to have, knowing how to operate a gas bike. It’s kind of like the value of knowing how to operate a manual transmission in a car. I almost never drive anymore since I pretty much live on two wheels. But the rare case comes up, usually on vacation, where my wife and I are the only ones in our friends group that know how to drive a stick. That means when traveling, especially in Europe and Asia, we’re able to beg, borrow, or rent a car more easily (though it has the downside of forcing us to be designated drivers in any group we’re in). It’s not a skill I use often, but I’m glad to have it. And so if you have to learn how to ride a gas bike to get your license and then immediately switch to an electric bike, that’s not a terrible thing.

And look, even if after this long and drawn-out article about the advantages of electric motorcycles you still end up wanting a gas bike, I won’t lose any sleep over it. Whatever you ride, you’re going to have a blast. You may be surprised how open and accepting the motorcycle world is. It’s full of fun people that enjoy riding. At around a quarter of the red lights I roll up to other gas bikers will start asking me about my electric ride. It’s a fun world full of cool people. And if you end up on a gas bike, that’s not the end of the world. You’ll still have a great time.

Just not as great as if you went electric. ?

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State of New York commits $21 million to support zero-emission mobility

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State of New York commits  million to support zero-emission mobility

While the Trump Administration walks back emissions standards and pretends science isn’t real, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is announcing plans to improve the quality of life for her constituents by investing over $21 million in support of zero-emission mobility and transportation solutions across New York State.

New York’s newly announced Clean Mobility Program will provide funding for scalable, community-led demonstration projects highlighting micro mobility, ride sharing, and community-managed “on-demand shared transportation” options.

The Governor’s office believes these solutions could help lower air pollution in the state while offering residents affordable connections to services, jobs, and transit. Objectively needed wins, in other words – and even more needed in traditionally underserved communities.

Governor Hochul gets it


NY Governor Kathy Huchul, via governor.ny.gov.

“Even as the federal government walks away from clean air and energy standards, New York continues to invest in modern, flexible and efficient electric transportation options that improve air quality and expand affordable consumer choices,” explains Governor Hochul. “Our priority is linking communities, including areas that have been historically marginalized, with resources that provide residents with a variety of flexible transportation options that allow them to conduct their daily business uninterrupted.”

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The program is the latest of the state’s recent EV funding initiatives, and the official release (on the New York State website) announced more details about The Clean Mobility Program:

The Clean Mobility program offers up to $21.6 million for projects across New York State and will award up to $3 million per project, with priority given to projects in disadvantaged communities, as defined by the Climate Justice Working Group.

Additionally, up to $8 million is set aside to fund demonstration projects located in specific areas of the state, including those served by the upstate investor-owned utilities. This includes a total of up to $5 million for micro mobility projects in the Central Hudson, National Grid, New York State Electric & Gas, and Rochester Electric & Gas region and up to $3 million for any type of eligible demonstration projects located in the Bronx.

NEW YORK STATE

Proposals for demonstration projects must include a completed planning document that includes community engagement, site identification and operations, project partner identification, technical feasibility assessment, and a policy and regulatory feasibility assessment. Any e-bikes or e-scooters deployed in these projects must meet industry and state safety standards to be eligible.

Proposals are due on September 25, 2025 by 3:00 PM EST. For more information on this funding opportunity please visit the NYSERDA’s website.

Electrek’s Take


New York City; by Benny Rotlevy, via Unsplash.

Times Square banned cars in 2009 and New York City implemented congestion pricing earlier this year, angering exactly the right people in exactly the right way for exactly the right reasons. In both cases, the plans worked, the problems were solved for, and the lives of the people of New York improved. Governor Hochul’s latest plan is sure to be the latest in an ever-growing line of green success stories.

SOURCE | IMAGES: New York State.


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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

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EVgo set to borrow up to a $300 million to build 1,500 new DC fast chargers

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EVgo set to borrow up to a 0 million to build 1,500 new DC fast chargers

EVgo has secured a massive, $225 million loan facility with five commercial banks in a bid to accelerate its expansion plans and add more than 1,500 new DC fast chargers to America’s EV charging landscape – and they have an option to borrow even more!

This week, EVgo announced that it has closed on a first-of-its-kind, senior secured, non-recourse credit facility with “top tier” banks for $225 million – and they have the option to increase their line of credit by $75 million more to fund additional network growth.

“This groundbreaking financing transaction sets a precedent for expanding high-power charging infrastructure by leveraging debt capital,” said Francine Sullivan, EVgo CLO & EVP Corporate Development. “Such resounding support from the global project finance bank market marks another milestone in EVgo’s plan to enhance value with our growing industry-leading fast charging solutions. We look forward to partnering with our banking partners to continue to grow our leadership position into the future.”

The credit card facility is being funded by a group of five “top tier” banks, according to EVgo, with the project being led by SMBC as Structuring Agent, Coordinating Lead Arranger, and Joint Bookrunner. Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, and ING Bank NV are acting as the Joint Lead Arrangers and Joint Bookrunners, while Investec Bank Plc is also on, though “just” as a participating lender.

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The companies involved are calling this new capital for public fast charging an important milestone that reflects both the maturity and profitability of the EVgo network, and broader confidence in the company’s management team.

“This financing demonstrates SMBC’s continued ability to lead innovative financing solutions for clients in emerging sectors across the broader infrastructure landscape,” said Juan Kreutz, SMBC Americas Head of Global Structured Finance. “We are proud to partner with an industry leader like EVgo on this pioneering financing as the company expands its network of accessible charging infrastructure throughout the US.”

Electrek’s Take


More public EV charging, including curbside, envisioned in Chicago plan
DC fast charging stations in Chicago; via EVgo.

The people running EVgo are smart. They understand that the loss of the $7,500 Federal tax credit isn’t the dealbreaker it’s being made out to be, and that the demand for chargers is only going to continue to grow. What’s more, the banks have done their research, looked at the projections, and decided the odds of getting their $225-300 million were pretty good.

Glad to see it. Now, for give me – I’m off to watch The Big Short again (for unrelated reasons).

SOURCE | IMAGES: EVgo.


If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them. 

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Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street’s invisible backbone

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Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street’s invisible backbone

Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a small band of developers huddled in a drafty Berlin loft strung with dangling lightbulbs, laptops balanced on mismatched chairs and chipped tables. They weren’t corporate titans or venture-backed founders — just idealists working long nights to push a radical idea into reality.

From that sparse office, they launched “Frontier,” Ethereum‘s first live network. It was bare-bones — no interface, no polish, nothing user-friendly. But it could mine, execute smart contracts, and let developers test decentralized applications. It was the spark that transformed Ethereum from an abstract concept into a living, breathing system.

Bitcoin had captured headlines as “digital gold,” but what they built was something else entirely: programmable money, a financial operating system where code could move funds, enforce contracts, and create businesses without banks or brokers.

One year earlier and 520 miles away in Zurich, Paul Brody got a call from IBM security: A kid was wandering the lab unattended.

“That’s not a child,” Brody told them. “That’s Vitalik. He’s a grown-up — he just looks really young.”

Paul Brody and Vitalik Buterin with IBM and Samsung executives at CES 2015, where IBM unveiled its first blockchain prototype built on Ethereum’s early code.

Paul Brody

At the time, Buterin was building the bones of Ethereum. The blockchain was still in its alpha stage, an early version of what would become a $420 billion platform rewiring Wall Street and powering decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenized markets across the globe.

Brody, then leading a research team at IBM, remembers how quickly the idea clicked.

“One of the guys on the research team came to me and said, ‘I’ve met this really interesting guy. He’s got a really cool idea…It’s like a version of bitcoin, but we’re going to make it much faster and programmable,'” he said. “And when he said that to me, I thought, ‘That’s it. That is what I want. That is what we need.'”

With Buterin’s help, IBM built its first blockchain prototype on Ethereum’s early code, unveiling it at CES in 2015 alongside Samsung. “That was how I ended up down this path,” Brody said. “I was done with all other technology and basically made the switch to blockchain.”

Even now, as EY’s global blockchain leader, Brody remembers feeling a pang of envy. “This is a kid, and it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was jealous of Vitalik… to be able to do that.”

He added, “I don’t think opportunities like that could have been surfaced when I was that age.”

Now, a decade later, that experiment has quietly rewired global markets.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“It’s very impressive, just how much the space has succeeded and grown into, beyond pretty much anyone’s expectations,” Buterin told CNBC in Cannes on the sidelines of the blockchain’s flagship event in Europe.

Buterin said the change over the past decade has been staggering. Ten years ago, he recalled, the crypto community was “just a very small space,” with only a handful of people working on bitcoin and a few other projects.

Since then, Ethereum has become “this big thing,” Buterin reflected, with major corporations now launching assets on both its base layer and layer-two networks. Parts of national economies are beginning to run on Ethereum infrastructure, a far cry from its cypherpunk origins.

But Buterin warned that mainstream adoption brings risks as well as benefits. One concern is that if too few issuers or intermediaries dominate, they could become “de facto controllers of the ecosystem.” He described a scenario where Ethereum might appear open, but, in practice, all the keys are managed by centralized providers.

“That’s the thing that we don’t want,” he said.

Prague to the Riviera

Two years earlier in Prague, CNBC met Buterin at Paralelní Polis, a sprawling industrial complex turned anarchist tech hub in the city’s Holešovice district. The building’s labyrinthine staircases and shadowed corridors felt like a physical map of the crypto world itself — part resistance movement, part experiment in reimagining power.

It was a place built on Václav Benda’s concept of a “parallel society,” where decentralized technologies offered refuge from state surveillance and control. It’s the kind of place where Buterin, a self-described nomad, found himself at home among cypherpunks and cryptographic idealists.

At the time, Buterin described crypto’s greatest utility not in speculative trading, but in helping people survive broken financial systems in emerging markets.

ETHPrague 2023 was held at Paralelní Polis in the Czech Republic.

Pavel Sinagl

“The stuff that we often find a bit basic and boring is exactly the stuff that brings lots of value,” he told CNBC at the time. “Just being able to plug into the international economy — these are things that they don’t have, and these are things that provide huge value for people there.”

Even in Prague, where coders worked to make payments fast and censorship-resistant, the technology felt like a resistance movement — privacy-preserving, anti-authoritarian, a lifeline in countries where banking collapses were common and money couldn’t be trusted.

This year, Buterin keynoted Ethereum’s flagship conference at the Palais des Festivals — the same red carpet venue that hosts movie stars each spring.

It was a fitting symbol of Ethereum’s journey: from underground hacker dens to a network that governments, banks, and brokerages are now racing to build upon.

Brody, who currently leads blockchain strategy at EY, says what matters most is how deeply Ethereum is integrating into traditional finance. “The global financial system is really nicely described as a whole network of pipes,” he said.

“What’s happening now is that Ethereum is getting plumbed into this infrastructure,” Brody continued, noting that until recently, crypto operated on entirely separate rails from traditional finance.

Now, he said, Ethereum is being wired directly into core transaction systems, setting the stage for massive financial flows — from investors to everyday savers — to migrate away from older mechanisms toward Ethereum-based platforms that can move money faster, at lower cost, and with more advanced functionality than legacy systems allow.

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Becoming the plumbing of Wall Street

Stablecoins — digital dollars that live on Ethereum — power trillions in payments, tokenized assets and funds are moving on-chain, and Robinhood recently rolled out tokenized U.S. equities via Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based layer two.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of all stablecoin activity.

Between Circle’s IPO and the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, now signed into law by President Donald Trump, regulators have new reason to engage with, rather than fight, this transformation.

Data from Deutsche Bank shows stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year — more than Mastercard and Visa combined. The bank itself has announced plans to build a tokenization platform on zkSync, a fast, cost-efficient Ethereum layer two designed to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Digital asset exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken are racing to capture this crossover between traditional securities and crypto.

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As part of its quarterly earnings release, Coinbase said this week it’s launching tokenized stocks and prediction markets for U.S. users in the coming months, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last year, offering qualified investors on-chain access to yield with real-time redemptions settled in USDC.

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its staying power as the trusted network for global finance. Buterin told CNBC in Cannes that there’s a misconception about what institutions actually want.

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

He added that firms frequently ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Institutions are choosing various layer twos to meet specific needs — Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank zkSync, Coinbase and Kraken Optimism — but they all ultimately settle on Ethereum’s base layer.

“The value proposition of Ethereum is its global reach, its huge capital flows, its incredible programmability,” Brody said.

He added that the fact it isn’t the fastest blockchain or the one with the quickest settlement times “is secondary to the fact that it’s overall the most widely adopted and flexible system.”

Brody also believes history points toward consolidation. He said that in most technology standards wars, one platform ultimately dominates. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become that dominant programmability layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a risk-off, scarcity-driven asset.

Engineers, he said, “love to work on a standard… to scale on a standard,” and Ethereum has become precisely that.

Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, in Cannes for Europe’s largest annual gathering for the blockchain.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same pattern from inside the ecosystem.

“Institutions choose Ethereum over and over again for its values,” Stańczak said. “Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance.”

When institutions send an order to the market, they want to be sure that it’s treated fairly, that nobody has preference, and that the transaction is executed at the time when it’s delivered. “That’s what Ethereum guarantees,” added Stańczak.

Those assurances have become more valuable as traditional finance moves on-chain.

Scaling without losing its soul

Ethereum’s path hasn’t been smooth. The network has weathered spectacular booms and busts, rivals promising faster speeds, and criticism that it’s too slow or expensive for mass adoption. Yet it has outlasted nearly all early competitors.

In 2022, Ethereum replaced its old transaction validation method, proof-of-work — where armies of computers competed to solve puzzles — with proof-of-stake, where users lock up their ether as collateral to help secure the network. The shift cut Ethereum’s energy use by more than 99% and set the stage for upgrades aimed at making apps faster and cheaper to run on its base layer.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in Prague, where he finds refuge with like-minded programmers looking to change the world through cryptography-powered technology.

CNBC

The next decade will test whether Ethereum can scale without compromise.

Buterin said the first priority is getting Ethereum to “the finish line” in terms of its technical goals. That means improving scalability and speed without sacrificing its core principles of decentralization and security — and ideally making those properties even stronger.

Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, could dramatically increase transaction capacity while making it possible to verify that the chain is following the rules of the protocol on something as small as a smartwatch.

There are also algorithmic changes the team already knows are needed to protect Ethereum against large-scale computing attacks. Implementing those, Buterin said, is part of the path to making Ethereum “a really valuable part of global infrastructure that helps make the internet and the economy a more free and open place.”

Buterin believes the real change won’t come with fireworks. He said it may already be unfolding years before most people recognize it.

“This type of disruption doesn’t feel like overturning the existing system,” he said. “It feels like building a new thing that just keeps growing and growing until eventually more and more people realize you don’t even have to look at the old thing if you didn’t want to.”

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