Ethereum Is ‘the Big Daddy’ but Raoul Pal’s Biggest Bet Is Elsewhere

Ethereum(CRYPTO: ETH) is “the big daddy” of smart contracts, Raoul Pal told the Milk Road podcast Wednesday, but Sui(CRYPTO: SUI) is the bet he is sizing up for the agentic AI economy.

Why Ethereum Still Leads

Pal joined the Milk Road podcast to make the bull case for Ethereum with one question: if you pulled the plug on Ethereum tomorrow, how much value would you destroy?

His answer runs into the trillions. Ethereum controls roughly 70% of the global stablecoin market, dominates DeFi, and holds nearly all high-end digital art value. 

Banks building on-chain are overwhelmingly choosing Ethereum-compatible infrastructure, and that installed base is not going anywhere.

He also pushed back on the idea that Layer 2 networks are parasitic. They are businesses built on top of infrastructure, and as long as value transacts across the Layer 1, Ethereum captures that activity.

Why He Is Concentrated in Sui

Smart contract networks historically consolidate around three to five leaders, Pal argued, with Ethereum and Solana(CRYPTO: SOL) already proven. 

He sees Sui as the third slot, built specifically for machine-speed transactions that existing chains cannot match. 

Sui’s programmable transaction blocks allow up to 1,024 different actions within a single blockchain slot, letting complex agentic workflows settle as one transaction rather than many. 

Free stablecoin transactions are a deliberate design choice to remove friction for machine-to-machine payments.

One data point stood out to Pal: during the recent market drawdown, only three chains maintained economic density as measured by TVL per active user. Ethereum ranked first, Sui second, and Solana third, despite Sui being the newest of the three.

How He Constructs the Portfolio

Pal told Milk Road his approach is simple: own the infrastructure layer and do almost nothing. 

His last purchase was three months ago, adding Ethereum, Solana, Sui, and Zcash(CRYPTO: ZEC). 

He holds most of his Ethereum exposure through high-end digital art NFTs for double convexity, owns <a href="https://xpertsstudio.com/bitfinex-comments-on-recent-bitcoin-price-movements-and-etf/” title=”Bitfinex Comments on Recent Bitcoin Price Movements and ETF”>Bitcoin(CRYPTO: BTC) as a separate store-of-value position, and sizes Sui as his highest-conviction growth bet.

One warning he flagged: global excess liquidity is running at only 3% to 4% versus a historical average of 11%, which is why crypto has struggled despite strong on-chain fundamentals across the ecosystem.

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