SharpLink Gaming, a Minneapolis-based company, has successfully transformed into the largest publicly traded Ethereum holding company, adding over $30 million in ETH to its treasury last week.
Details on the accumulation and Ethereum staking strategy
This publicly traded company has purchased 12,207 $ETH at an average price of $2,513 between June 16 and June 20, increasing its total ETH holdings to 188,478 ETH – equivalent to approximately $461 million, based on the current price of Ethereum.
"This move reflects our belief in the utility of Ethereum and our commitment to exploring transformative technologies that can unlock new value for our business and shareholders," said Joe Lubin, Chairman of the Board of SharpLink, co-founder of Ethereum, and CEO of ConsenSys, in a statement.
The company's stock price rose over 11% today to $10.02, but is still down 72% over the past month. This decline is mainly due to a large sell-off that occurred after a recent S-3 filing that Lubin claims the market is "misinterpreting." Some investors seem to have read this filing as large investors selling off shares, which Lubin said is not true. The publicly traded Solana holding company Upexi also appears to have suffered the same fate on Monday, as its shares dropped 60% following a similar SEC filing.
Before that sell-off, SBET shares had risen to over $90 by the end of May, according to data from Yahoo Finance. SharpLink first announced plans to establish an Ethereum treasury in May, raising $425 million through a private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal to buy and hold the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Unlike popular cryptocurrency treasury vehicles like Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy, which typically only accumulate their chosen underlying assets, SharpLink is putting its ETH to work, engaging in staking and decentralized finance (DeFi) to generate returns. As of June 20, the company reported that it has put 100% of its ETH holdings into staking platforms, yielding 120 ETH in rewards and an ETH growth rate per share of 18.97%.