Ethereum Treasury SharpLink Adds $176 Million in ETH to Holdings

Ethereum treasury SharpLink Gaming added over $176 million in ETH to its stash last week, the Nasdaq-listed company announced on Tuesday. 

The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm’s holdings have grown to 837,230 ETH, now worth nearly $3.6 billion after it bought 39,008 ETH between August 25 and August 31, it said. 

“We remain opportunistic in our capital raising initiatives and will continue to closely monitor market conditions to maximize shareholder value,” Joseph Chalom, co-CEO of SharpLink, said in a statement. 

Publicly traded SharpLink (SBET) was trading more than 5% lower on Tuesday at $16.89. SharpLink’s stock has shot up more than 400% since mid-May, when it was trading for less than $3 per share. 

The company in May first announced it would buy ETH via a $425 million private investment in public equity, or PIPE, offering led by blockchain technology firm Consensys and with participation from Galaxy Digital, ParaFi Capital, Ondo, and Pantera Capital. (Disclosure: Consensys is one of 22 investors in an editorially independent Decrypt.)

Once a relatively obscure gambling marketing company, SharpLink in May pivoted to become a crypto treasury, following the model of Strategy—formerly MicroStrategy—which shifted from software development to buying Bitcoin in 2020 after years of struggling and low share prices.

Instead of buying Bitcoin, SharpLink opted for the second-biggest digital coin by market cap, Ethereum.

Myriad traders were previously optimistic that SharpLink would acquire 1 million ETH in total by September 16, but they’ve swung bearish after today’s acquisition. Now, only about 30% of users believe that SharpLink will hit that target, down sharply from about 57% on Monday evening. (Disclosure: Myriad is a product of Decrypt‘s parent company, DASTAN.)

A number of publicly-traded companies have adopted the same model, buying prominent cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, XRP, Solana, and BNB in an attempt to boost shareholder value. 

ETH was recently trading for about $4,300 per coin, down about 1% over a 24-hour period, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. ETH is down about 5% over the past week amid a wider slump in crypto markets, although it is up more than 23% during the past month. 

Ethereum hit a new all-time high mark of $4,946 in August, breaking a 2021 record after remaining well below the previous mark while Bitcoin and other major coins surged to new highs in recent years.