Written by: Shenchao TechFlow
A recently evident trend is that everyone is starting to look bullish on Ethereum again.
From shouting 'Ethereum is the oil of the digital age' to slogans like 'ETH will rise to 10,000' at EthCC... what else can revive ETH?
The answer to this question may not be on-chain but rather in the US stock market.
As 'Bitcoin reserves' become a new trend for publicly listed companies in the US stock market, ETH reserves have become the new darling of the US stock market.
For example, last week, SharpLink announced it had purchased another 7,689 ETH, making it the publicly listed company with the most ETH reserves; yesterday its stock price (SBET) also rose nearly 30%;
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin mining company BitMine (BMNR), focused on BTC mining, recently also announced a $250 million ETH asset reserve plan, aiming to emulate MicroStrategy. The company's stock price has already risen 16 times in a month, with short-term wealth effects even surpassing some Meme coins.
Additionally, another publicly listed Bitcoin mining company, Blockchain Technology Consensus Solutions (BTCS), has also followed a similar path, announcing on Tuesday plans to raise $100 million for purchasing ETH.
Upon the announcement, the company's stock price skyrocketed by 110%.
There is also the more aggressive Bit Digital, whose main business is Bitcoin mining and Ethereum staking, directly announcing a full shift to Ethereum and selling Bitcoin, with its stock BTBT rising about 20% during the day yesterday.
These four companies are a microcosm of the recent active embrace of Ethereum narratives in the US stock market and are stars at the forefront of the capital market.
Speculative funding attention is limited, and the market often cannot remember more latecomers, so you can see them scrambling to make official announcements, seeking a clear stance and mental positioning.
We also analyzed the similarities and differences in business and underlying resources among these companies to provide some references for players focusing on the linkage between coins and stocks.
Different businesses, but all seeking to turn losses into profits
SharpLink (SBET), BitMine (BMNR), Blockchain Technology Consensus Solutions (BTCS), and Bit Digital (BTBT) are competing to bet on ETH, each having its own business logic behind the stock price surge.
SharpLink (SBET): From gambling to gambling
SharpLink Gaming (SBET) mainly engages in online sports betting. It also collaborates with sports media companies to help them develop strategies, products, and innovative solutions.
However, in 2024, the company's revenue was only $3.66 million, a year-on-year drop of 26%; that year it also achieved profitability by selling some of its business.
Before the transformation, SBET had a market value of about $10 million, with stock prices hovering on the edge of delisting (below $1), and shareholder equity of less than $2.5 million, facing compliance pressure. Its traditional business had limited growth, making it difficult to break through in the fiercely competitive gambling industry.
In May 2025, SBET raised $425 million in a private placement to buy ETH, currently holding 205,634 ETH (as of July 9).
The large-scale financing to acquire ETH has also made it one of the largest publicly traded ETH holders globally, second only to the Ethereum Foundation.
Public data shows that over 95% of SBET's ETH is deployed in liquid staking protocols, having earned 322 ETH in staking rewards so far.
Cash flow generated from staking can indeed have a positive impact on optimizing the balance sheet, but more importantly, this strategy not only optimizes the financial structure but also transforms SBET from a company struggling on the edge of delisting into a 'crypto concept stock' sought after by the capital market.
Against the backdrop of bottlenecks in main business and the Ethereum ETF craze, SBET's transformation seems more like a gamble; the high ETH ratio also makes it highly susceptible to price fluctuations, after all, ETH can drop much more sharply than BTC.
BitMine (BMNR): From BTC mining to ETH treasury
From its name, BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) is a Bitcoin mining company that relies on immersion cooling technology to mine blockchain in Texas and Trinidad.
By self-mining and hosting third-party devices, BMNR generates Bitcoin revenue.
In the first quarter of 2025, the company's revenue was $3.31 million, but high energy consumption and low profit margins (with a net loss of $3.29 million in 2024) made it struggle. Before its transformation, BMNR had a market value of only $26 million, and its mining business was constrained by high costs and fierce competition, with limited growth space.
On June 30, the company announced a private placement plan to acquire approximately 95,000 ETH, but the actual holdings have not yet been disclosed. However, after the announcement, BMNR's stock price soared from $4.50 to $111.50, surging 3000% since June.
At the same time, the rising stock price has also boosted BitMine's market value, which is currently around $5.7 billion. Unlike SBET, BitMine still retains its original BTC mining business, making its ETH reserves seem more like a short-term narrative.
Blockchain Technology Consensus Solutions (BTCS): Old and new integrated, narratives align with business.
BTCS differs from the above two companies in that its reserves of ETH are well-grounded in its historical business.
The company focuses on blockchain infrastructure, established in 2014, and is one of the early blockchain companies listed on NASDAQ. Its core business focuses on the operation of Ethereum and other Proof of Stake (PoS) blockchain networks' infrastructure, mainly operating Ethereum nodes and providing data analysis platform ChainQ, offering staking and data services for DeFi and enterprises.
But similarly, the company's financial performance is poor.
In 2024, BTCS's revenue was approximately $2.6 million, a year-on-year decrease of 12%, mainly due to high node operation costs and increasing market competition. The net loss reached $5.8 million, falling into a financial dilemma of high investment and low return.
BTCS has held ETH since 2021 and operates validator nodes, accumulating 14,600 ETH, far earlier than the aforementioned publicly listed companies' ETH reserve plans; in June-July this year, BTCS accelerated its ETH accumulation through AAVE DeFi lending and traditional financing, and announced on July 8 plans to raise $100 million to further expand its ETH holdings.
Objectively speaking, increasing ETH can enhance BTCS's staking capacity for validator nodes in its main business, boosting gas fee income and market competitiveness. The market is also quite receptive, as this announcement caused BTCS's stock price to surge over 100% in one day, rising from $2.50 to $5.25.
Bit Digital (BTBT): Selling BTC, fully transitioning to ETH
Bit Digital, Inc. (BTBT) is a blockchain technology company headquartered in New York, founded in 2015, initially focusing on Bitcoin (BTC) mining, and has gradually laid out Ethereum staking infrastructure since 2022, along with GPU cloud computing power and asset management services.
Similarly, the company is also in financial loss; its financial report shows that in the first quarter of 2025, revenue was $25.1 million, with an adjusted accounting loss of around $44.5 million.
In July 2025, the company increased its ETH holdings to 100,603 (approximately $264 million) through a $172 million public offering and selling 280 BTC (with ETH accounting for 60% of assets), making it the company with the second-largest ETH holdings after SharpLink.
It is clear that these four companies share characteristics of poor financial conditions and low market capitalization, similar to some low-market-cap protocols in the crypto market that have no revenue, rapidly rising after gaining narrative and attention.
Key drivers behind the transformation
David Hoffman, founder of Bankless, had a very profound insight into the phenomenon of ETH reserves in a recent article:
The strategy is simple: incorporate ETH into the balance sheet, then market ETH to Wall Street... Ethereum itself has many narrative highlights; what ETH needs is just a sufficiently vibrant person to excite Wall Street.
Connections and resources link the crypto narrative to traditional capital markets. From crypto barons to investment banking giants, these four companies have different key figures behind them.
SharpLink: Ethereum Co-Founder and His Crypto Gang
From the brink of delisting to the largest ETH holder, this transformation is inseparable from Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin's maneuvering.
As the founder and CEO of ConsenSys, Lubin oversees critical infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as the MetaMask wallet and Infura (which handles over 50% of Ethereum transactions).
In May 2025, Lubin joined SBET's board of directors as chairman, personally pushing for $463 million in financing. This is also closely linked to crypto VCs who have previously invested in various projects in the Ethereum ecosystem.
He led the $425 million private placement for SBET with his own ConsenSys, collaborating with several institutions such as ParaFi Capital (a top DeFi venture capital firm investing in Uniswap, Aave), Pantera Capital (an early investor in Ethereum managing over $5 billion), and Galaxy Digital (managing Ethereum ETFs).
Despite community skepticism about this being a conspiracy by the Ethereum Foundation, Lubin's connections and ConsenSys' resources undoubtedly give SBET the ability to become a pioneer in the Wall Streetization of Ethereum.
BitMine: The interaction between Thomas Lee and Silicon Valley VCs
Thomas Lee, a well-known Wall Street strategist and co-founder of Fundstrat, is famous for his accurate predictions and is the driving force behind BitMine (BMNR)'s ETH reserve strategy.
Lee has been bullish on Bitcoin since 2017, predicting ETH will reach $5,000-$6,000 in 2024, and announced on June 2025 that he would serve as the chairman of the BMNR board.
He mentioned in an interview the reasons for betting on Ethereum:
To put it bluntly, the real reason I chose Ethereum is that stablecoins are exploding. Circle is one of the best IPOs in the last five years, with a PE ratio of 100 times EBITDA, bringing excellent performance to some funds... Stablecoins are the ChatGPT of the crypto world, having entered the mainstream, and it is evidence of Wall Street's attempt to 'equity-tokenize' tokens. Meanwhile, the crypto circle is 'tokenizing' equity, like the dollar being tokenized.
He also stated on CNBC that BMNR will become 'MicroStrategy of Ethereum.'
In the $250 million fundraising plan proposed by Lee for BitMine, we also see the presence of well-known Silicon Valley VC Founders Fund, founded by Peter Thiel, which has invested in SpaceX, Palantir, and began heavily investing in crypto, including Ethereum, Solana, and Bullish Group, which has also acquired CoinDesk.
Additionally, crypto-native institutions such as Pantera, FalconX, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, and DCG are also involved.
Bit Digital: CEO was a Bitfinex advisor
Samir Tabar is the captain of Bit Digital (BTBT)'s ETH reserve strategy, and he also has experience crossing over from Wall Street to the crypto circle.
Tabar previously served as the head of capital markets at Merrill Lynch, was a strategic advisor at Bitfinex from 2017-2018, optimizing USDT trading processes on the Ethereum network, and joined Bit Digital in 2021.
Tabar referred to Ethereum as 'a blue-chip asset reshaping the financial system' in a CNBC interview, emphasizing its enormous potential in stablecoins and DeFi applications. The traditional financial background and crypto experience provide more credibility for Bit Digital's transformation, and its 'blue-chip asset' claims resonate with the narrative of reviving Ethereum.
In June 2025, Bit Digital raised $172 million through an ATM issuance to purchase ETH; major investors include BlackRock and investment bank underwriter H.C. Wainwright, the latter of which has provided financial support to Bit Digital multiple times, reaffirming BTBT as a 'buy' rating in 2025 with a target price of $5-7.
BTCS: Actively using AAVE lending to acquire ETH
Compared to the previous three, BTCS's CEO Charles Allen is relatively low-key.
However, he is also a veteran of the crypto industry, with blockchain experience starting from Bitcoin investments in 2011, transitioning to Ethereum in 2014, and pushing BTCS to become the first NASDAQ blockchain company in 2016.
In June 2025, he led BTCS to borrow $2.5 million through AAVE to purchase 1,000 ETH, with plans in July 2025 to raise $100 million, with investors including ATW Partners and H.C. Wainwright, the former being a hybrid venture capital/private equity firm based in New York, investing in both debt and equity.
The commonality we can see from these four companies is:
Each company has core figures related to the crypto circle, and there is overlap in the fundraising targets of different companies.
Crypto funds that have previously invested in Ethereum are also the behind-the-scenes drivers of the ETH reserve craze; the capital network of the Ethereum ecosystem is extensive and perhaps another testament to the robustness of the Ethereum network itself.
Money never sleeps. As ETH reserve companies become the new Meme stocks of 2025, these businesses will inevitably create wealth for many. Currently, this coin-stock feast is still far from over.
