DFG founder and chief executive James Wo said bitcoin still holds the strongest institutional position in crypto, while ethereum is not close to earning the same standing. Speaking to CoinDesk at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, he pushed back on Bitmine Immersion Technologies Chairman Tom Lee’s call that ether could reach $250,000.
Wo argued that bitcoin benefits from a broad and durable consensus. In his view, support for bitcoin now extends well beyond early adopters and increasingly includes participants across crypto and traditional finance, many of whom recognize it as a safe-haven asset or a distinct asset class. He said ethereum has not reached that point. At the time of writing, ether was trading near $1,775 and bitcoin was close to $63,000.
Why Wo sees weaker value capture for ether
Wo said ethereum’s fundamental valuation still depends heavily on applications built directly on the network capturing fee value. That structure, he argued, has changed as Layer-2 networks take more transaction volume and retain part of the fee utility on their own. In his assessment, value accrual across the Ethereum ecosystem has become more fragmented, leaving the ETH token itself with less ability to absorb economic value at the base layer.
He also said onchain activity has not met earlier expectations, and for that reason he does not expect ether to revisit its all-time high. Bitcoin, by contrast, is the asset he expects to perform better. The article notes that this remains an open debate. In February, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sparked fresh discussion after suggesting that Layer-2 networks, long treated as Ethereum’s primary scaling path, may “no longer make sense” as the network becomes faster and cheaper. That debate centers on whether future upgrades could direct more economic activity back to Ethereum’s base layer.
From a $20 million start to more than $1 billion under management
Wo’s market view is shaped by more than a decade of investing in digital assets, beginning with bitcoin. After studying mathematics at university, he watched classmates trade bitcoin during the 2014 bear market. He later entered the sector with $20 million from his mother, who at the time managed an established enterprise and private equity firm in China. Wo recalled that she did not really understand bitcoin at first and even asked what it was, but chose to support him anyway.
He deployed that capital into bitcoin during the lows of late 2014 and 2015. As the 2016 bull market developed, DFG broadened its balance sheet into other Layer-1 protocols and became an early venture participant in ecosystems such as Solana, Polkadot and Near. Wo also led early-stage corporate investments in consumer applications and Web3 infrastructure, including a $10 million allocation in January 2018 to Circle’s USDC project.
Those bets helped turn DFG from a bitcoin-centered investment vehicle into one of the larger venture investors in crypto. According to the report, the firm now manages more than 100 portfolio entities and has over $1 billion in total assets under management. While Wo remains cautious on ether, he keeps a constructive multi-year view on bitcoin and describes it as a better liquid investment than regional real estate and traditional equity markets.