Maria Shen, General Partner at Electric Capital, speaking at ETHDenver 2026 — and it reframes how to think about Ethereum as “The largest expansion of the dollar's network effects in decades.” Her argument wasn’t about replacing the dollar. It was about Ethereum hosting it. With “over 160 billion stable coins on chain” and stablecoin supply up “more than 60x” since 2020, she positioned Ethereum as settlement infrastructure for global dollar demand. She also emphasized that ETH itself could act as productive collateral — staked, yield-bearing, and embedded into lending markets, with roughly $19B cited as locked collateral. The structural signal here is important. ✅ Dollar dominance may increasingly route through public blockchains ✅ Ethereum is competing as financial infrastructure, not just a smart contract platform ✅ Collateral is becoming programmable and yield-generating by default ✅ Institutions are evaluating neutrality and censorship resistance as infrastructure criteria If the dollar’s growth is happening on-chain, the question shifts from “Will institutions use crypto?” to “Which chains become systemic financial plumbing?” Follow me - @Johnny for grounded insights on how digital assets are reshaping finance and how to ledger them. #thejohnnycrypto #bitcoin #Stablecoins #nostr #ETH #grownostr #asknostr