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A short guide on how to beat the US equity market with Ethereum
• There is a strong case to be made for Ethereum as a substitute for a high-growth tech investment.
• The outperformance of an optimized equity portfolio that includes Ethereum vis-à-vis a NASDAQ 100 benchmark amounted to around 10%-points per year since 2021 without significantly compromising on overall volatility or max drawdown of the pure equity portfolio
• We think that the market has yet to fully discount the performance potential of Ethereum (ETH) especially with regards to the potential price impact via the Ethereum ETF trading launch in the US
Becoming the next “Morningstar”
Equity fund managers are always on the lookout for new investment ideas that may help them to “beat the market”, i.e. outperform their respective equity index/benchmark.
In particular, US equity benchmarks are considered to be one of the best performing and most competitive equity benchmarks worldwide. In recent years, popular strategies have evolved around overweighting high growth quality stocks such as the “FAANGs” or the “Magnificent 7” in order to outperform major US indices like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ 100.
This report presents a novel approach to structurally outperform a high-growth US equity benchmark like the NASDAQ 100 without compromising too much on risk by adding exposure to one of the fastest growing major cryptoassets – Ethereum.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum represents a significant evolutionary step in the internet’s development, transitioning from Web1 and Web2 to Web3 or the “Internet of Value.”
Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has developed a diverse ecosystem of decentralized applications (dApps), notably in Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
In general, Ethereum is expected to dis-intermediate and disrupt the following industries:
• Banking & Payments
• Social Media / Marketing / Gaming
• Infrastructure (tokenisation)
• AI
Ethereum is similar to an app store or tech platform like Android or iOS where decentralized applications can be built on and assets can be transferred as easy as sending an Email.
Ethereum can be considered a new type of asset that covers multiple business reservoirs, extracting value from each via transaction fees/”taxes” from those who build on Ethereum and leverage the security and the tech platform.
Unique to Ethereum is the ability for investors to own a part of its value layer by investing into the Ethereum token (ETH), akin to owning shares in the foundational internet protocol TCP/IP.
Moreover, Ethereum investors can earn a yield like equity dividends by validating transactions – so-called “staking rewards”. In addition, the Ethereum protocol takes a certain amount of tokens out of circulation through its “burn” mechanism which is comparable to a stock buyback in equities.
It is no surprise that Ethereum (ETH) tends to be somewhat correlated with the performance of major equity indices such as the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ 100 but also offers diversification relative to pure equity allocations. For instance, the full sample correlation of Ethereum (ETH) to the S&P 500 is only around 0.31.
We therefore think that there is a strong case to be made for Ethereum as a substitute for a high-growth tech investment.
Read more in our special report on the investment case for Ethereum.
The numbers
The following chart and table present the performance of a plain-vanilla NASDAQ 100 (NDX) investment, an optimized portfolio consisting of NASDAQ 100 (NDX) and Ethereum (ETH) as well as a pure Ethereum (ETH) investment:
As one can see, an equity manager would have outperformed a pure NASDAQ 100 benchmark significantly by allocating approximately a quarter of this equity portfolio to Ethereum (ETH).
The outperformance vis-à-vis a NASDAQ 100 benchmark amounted to around 10%-points per year since 2021 without significantly compromising on overall volatility or max drawdown of the pure equity portfolio.
What is more is that Ethereum’s “Price-to-Earnings” ratio implied by staking rewards (“dividends”) and burn rate (“buybacks”) is comparatively attractive relative to the Magnificent 7 stocks, despite very high expected returns for Ethereum over the coming 10 years:
We don’t think that the market has yet fully discounted the performance potential of Ethereum (ETH) especially with regards to the potential price impact via the Ethereum ETF trading launch in the US as analysed here.
Bottom Line
• There is a strong case to be made for Ethereum as a substitute for a high-growth tech investment.
• The outperformance of an optimized equity portfolio that includes Ethereum vis-à-vis a NASDAQ 100 benchmark amounted to around 10%-points per year since 2021 without significantly compromising on overall volatility or max drawdown of the pure equity portfolio
• We think that the market has yet to fully discount the performance potential of Ethereum (ETH) especially with regards to the potential price impact via the Ethereum ETF trading launch in the US
To read more about suitable investment solutions with Ethereum, please click the button below:
This is not investment advice. Capital at risk. Read the full disclaimer
© ETC Group 2019-2024 | All rights reserved
Retail investors in the UK are on the brink of accessing crypto through regulated exchange-traded notes (ETNs), starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum. With demand rising, infrastructure tested, and regulators shifting stance, this is further validation for the asset class.
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The perpetual DEX wars: Hyperliquid, Aster, and Lighter in focus
Perpetual DEXs have exploded, with daily volumes topping $100 billion in 2025. Once dominant Hyperliquid now faces fierce competition from Aster and Lighter, each pushing unique innovations in speed, leverage, and zk-proofs. The race highlights a maturing DeFi derivatives market where innovation, not monopoly, defines leadership.
Research Newsletter
Each week the 21Shares Research team will publish our data-driven insights into the crypto asset world through this newsletter. Please direct any comments, questions, and words of feedback to research@21shares.com
Disclaimer
The information provided does not constitute a prospectus or other offering material and does not contain or constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction. Some of the information published herein may contain forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties and that actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. The information contained herein may not be considered as economic, legal, tax or other advice and users are cautioned to base investment decisions or other decisions solely on the content hereof.
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