SharpLink makes $174 mln Ethereum gamble: Co-CEO warns of risks

Key Takeaways

SharpLink Gaming acquired $174M worth of ETH, strengthening its spot among public treasuries. However, Co-CEO Chalom noted the risk associated with these treasury firms.

This year alone, Ethereum [ETH] has seen about eleven U.S. institutions adopt ETH strategies, an honor that was initially reserved for Bitcoin [BTC].

On that note, SharpLink Gaming (SBET) took its total holdings to 837,230 ETH. This followed an announcement that they had acquired another 39,008 ETH, valued at $176.4 million.

In total, the company added about 397,923 ETH in the last 30 days, per CoinGecko data. Their total holdings were at $3.66B at press time, about 0.694% of Ethereum’s total supply.

SharpLink Gaming announces ETH buy

SharpLink paid an average price of $3,603 per token since their July switch to a public company focused on ETH. The king of altcoin’s price of $4,366 indicated that they were in profits at press time.

The firm’s concentration of Ethereum has risen by about 97% since early June. From the data on SharpLink Gaming, the company had earned 2,318 ETH in staking rewards, with their ETH NAV at $3.68 billion.

About 860,369 ETH, valued at $3.7B, were waiting to be staked in September.

Source; SharpLink Gaming

However, despite the acquisition and strong fundamentals, their stock (SBET) continued to decline. The last 24 hours saw a drop of more than 4.71%, as price traded at $16.98, per Yahoo Finance data.

Joseph Chalom’s take 

Co-CEO Joseph Chalom said that Ethereum was embraced on Wall Street due to its security and liquidity.

The staking component ensures the network remains secure, while its wide application across the crypto space offered liquidity.

The former Head of Strategies at BlackRock explained that SharpLink raised $400M from Consensys and other institutions investors to buy ETH.

They also raise money through an at-the-market program on a daily basis from new equity investors. The Ethereum is staked and provide yield to make it productive.

However, Chalom noted the risk associated with ETH treasury firms in case of a massive market downturn.

Ethereum Treasury holdings

U.S. firms accounted for about 2.68% of the supply. SharpLink was second in terms of holdings, behind BitMine, which had more than double their amount.

BitMine’s total was at 1.867 ETH worth $8.167 billion, which represented about 1.547% of total ETH supply.

Coinbase, Bit Digital and ETHZilla wrapped up the top five, respectively. The total held by U.S. firms was at 3.233M valued at $14.15B, a 9.9% rise on the day.

Source: CoinGecko

Other jurisdictions like Hong Kong were also getting on board, with Yunfeng Financial holding about 10K ETH.