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A digital asset revolution led by traditional financial giants is quietly taking place
On the evening of September 2, Hong Kong-listed company Yunfeng Finance (00376.HK) issued an announcement stating that the company has spent US$44 million to purchase 10,000 Ethereum (ETH) and listed it as a strategic reserve asset.This is the first time that Jack Ma’s company has entered the cryptocurrency field on a large scale, marking a new stage in the integration of traditional finance and the crypto world.
Jack Ma’s advanced layout: from Alipay to blockchain
Yunfeng Finance is not an ordinary enterprise.Its history can be traced back to Wansheng International Securities, established in 1982. In 2015, Yunfeng Fund, led by Jack Ma and Yu Feng, invested in holdings with HK$3.9 billion, and transformed into a financial technology platform with multiple licenses such as securities, insurance, and asset management.
Jack Ma’s move was not a momentary impulse.At an entrepreneur’s symposium in February 2025, he proposed the concept of “technology encapsulation” – embedding algorithms into physical scenarios such as logistics and agriculture.As the core carrier of smart contracts, Ethereum is the financial infrastructure of this concept.
Why Ethereum?
When Bitcoin was called “digital gold”, Ethereum is quietly upgrading to “digital oil” and becoming the energy to drive the global digital economy.
First, productive asset attributes.Ethereum can earn an annualized return of 3-5% through pledge, which is more attractive than U.S. bonds in the Fed’s interest rate cut cycle.As of August 2025, the pledge volume of ETH has exceeded 33.8 million, accounting for more than 25% of the total supply, forming the “interest rate anchor” of on-chain finance.
Second, the settlement layer of the trillion-dollar market of RWA (real world assets).Ethereum occupys the global RWA market81% shareAmong the tokenized treasury bond products of institutions such as BlackRock and Fidelity, 80% choose Ethereum as the underlying agreement.BlackRock’s BUIDL fund size has exceeded US$2.4 billion, and more than 90% of its assets are deposited in Ethereum.
Third, the first-mover advantage of compliance.The passage of the US CLARITY Act marks the completion of ETH’s transformation from “high-risk assets” to “compliant digital goods”.EU MiCA regulations also clearly list it as a “compliance benchmark”, and the policy haze is gradually dissipating.
Influx of institutions: A financial revolution that is happening
Yunfeng Finance is just a wave of institutions pouring into the tide.In 2025, an unprecedented institutional hoarding frenzy is pushing Ethereum to the absolute core of the crypto stage.
Data shows that as of August 2025, the total amount of ETH held by institutions (enterprise treasury + ETF) has exceeded the total supply.8.3%(about 10 million pieces), doubled compared to 3% in early April.
Listed company BitMine Immersion Technologies has completed a leap from zero to the world’s largest corporate holder in 7 weeks, with positions exceeding 1.3 million ETH.Its goal is to control 5% of the global ETH supply (about 6 million pieces), and has reached 21.7%.
ETFs are another core channel for institutions to influx.BlackRock ETHA spot ETF holds more than 3.6 million ETH (valued over US$12 billion), and Grayscale Ethereum Trust holds nearly 2 million ETH.Net inflows in the past week reached US$2.85 billion, of which the single-day net inflow on August 11 exceeded US$1 billion.
RWA: $16 trillion worth of market opportunities
RWA (Real World Asset) Tokenization is Ethereum’s strongest narrative in 2025.
According to RWA.xyz platform data, the total real-time RWA (including stablecoins) in July 2025 is$268.39 billion, a year-on-year increase of 55%.The RWA value, excluding stablecoins, was US$25.44 billion, a year-on-year increase of up to 113%.
The total market value of global real assets is approximately US$620 trillion.McKinsey expects that by 2030, the tokenized assets on-chain (excluding stablecoins) will reach $2 trillion, and in optimism, it can reach $4 trillion.Even if it reaches US$2 trillion, it only accounts for 0.3% of global assets, and there is still huge room for growth.
The reason why Ethereum has become the preferred platform for RWA is because it has the key elements of “trust + compliance + asset mapping”.Among the 17 RWA funds, 8 of them chose Ethereum, including large institutions such as Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, JPMorgan, HSBC, etc.
Technology upgrade: The grand blueprint of Ethereum 2.0
The underlying transformation of Ethereum is the foundation of its attractiveness.The Pectra upgrade, which was implemented in Q1 2025, reshapes the network bones through key proposals, greatly improving performance and user experience.
EIP-7702 empowers ordinary wallets to have “smart contract-level functions”, realize Gas payment, social recovery, etc., completely bid farewell to the fear of mnemonics, and the user experience is in line with WeChat Pay.EIP-7251 has greatly increased the verifier pledge limit from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH, and the node communication efficiency has increased by 3 times, clearing obstacles for large-scale pledges in institutions.
The explosive growth of Layer2 solutions further unlocks ecological potential.Arbitrum, Optimism, etc. have increased the main network TPS to 100,000+, and reduced the transaction cost to the US$0.01 level, pushing the total lock-in value of DeFi (TVL) to return to US$180 billion, an increase of 450% from the trough in 2023.
Where is Ethereum’s next stop?
After breaking through $4,000, technical analysts see greater upside.According to Wikov’s theory, Ethereum’s minimum goal is pointing$6412.After the monthly triangle breaks through, the theoretical target is US$8,070.The rising triangle structure has exceeded US$4,000 and its target is directly aimed at US$16,700.
Institutional forecasts are also constantly increasing.Standard Chartered Bank raises its target price at the end of 2025 from US$4,000 to US$7,500, and is expected to reach US$12,000 by the end of 2026 and US$18,000 by the end of 2027.Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee proposed three major catalysts that ETH may impact $30,000: the implementation of stablecoin regulation, Wall Street’s “financial chain” and the explosion of AI+DeFi integration.
The future of the digital economy has come
Yunfeng Finance’s ETH investment is not only a reflection of technological beliefs, but also a reconstruction experiment on the underlying logic of finance.Jack Ma once said: “The best performance today is the lowest requirement tomorrow.”
When traditional financial giants began to vote with real money, and when the floodgates of the trillion-dollar market capitalization were opened, Ethereum was moving from “crypto tokens” to “financial infrastructure assets.”It is not only a store of value, but also a productive asset connecting the traditional finance and crypto world. It is the settlement layer of the RWA trillion market and the infrastructure of the AI agent economy.
The depth and breadth of this revolution may far exceed the previous cycle led by Bitcoin.This step from Jack Ma and Yunfeng Finance is providing more efficient solutions for global asset flows.
