Author: Shenchao TechFlow
A very obvious trend recently is that everyone is starting to look positively at Ethereum again.
From proclaiming 'Ethereum is the oil of the digital age' to the slogan 'ETH should rise to 10,000' appearing at EthCC... what can revive ETH?
The answer to this question may not lie on-chain, but in the U.S. stock market.
As 'Bitcoin reserves' become a new trend for U.S. listed companies, Ethereum reserves have become the new darling of the U.S. stock market.
For example, last week, SharpLink announced that it had purchased another 7,689 ETH, making it the company with the most ETH reserves; yesterday, its stock price (SBET) also rose nearly 30%;
BitMine (BMNR), which focuses on Bitcoin mining, recently announced a 250 million USD ETH asset reserve plan, intending to emulate MicroStrategy. The company's stock price has already increased 16 times within a month, and the short-term wealth effect has even exceeded that of some meme coins.
In addition, another publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, Blockchain Technology Consensus Solutions (BTCS), has also followed a similar path, announcing on Tuesday plans to raise 100 million USD to purchase ETH.
As soon as the news broke, 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, which directly announced a full transition to Ethereum and the sale of Bitcoin, and yesterday its stock BTBT rose about 20% during trading.
These four companies are a microcosm of the recent active embrace of Ethereum narratives in U.S. stocks and are stars at the forefront of the capital market.
Speculative funds have limited attention, 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 compared the similarities and differences in the business and underlying resources of these companies, providing some references for players who focus more on the correlation between cryptocurrencies and stocks.
Different businesses, but all seek to turn losses into profits
SharpLink (SBET), BitMine (BMNR), Blockchain Technology Consensus Solutions (BTCS), and Bit Digital (BTBT) are all betting on ETH, and the surge in stock prices is backed by their respective business logic.
SharpLink (SBET): Coming from gambling, going back to gambling
SharpLink Gaming (SBET) focuses on online sports betting. It also collaborates with sports media companies to help them develop strategies, products, and innovative solutions.
However, in 2024, the company had revenue of only 3.66 million USD, a year-on-year plunge of 26%; that year, it also achieved profitability by selling part of its business.
Before the transformation, SBET had a market value of about 10 million USD, its stock price hovering on the brink of delisting (below 1 USD), with shareholder equity of less than 2.5 million USD, 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 USD through private placements to aggressively buy ETH, currently holding 205,634 ETH (as of July 9).
Large-scale fundraising to acquire ETH has also made it one of the largest publicly traded ETH holders in the world, second only to the Ethereum Foundation.
Public information shows that over 95% of SBET's ETH is deployed in liquid staking protocols, and it has currently received staking rewards of 322 ETH.
The 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 allows SBET to transform from a small company struggling on the brink of delisting into a 'crypto concept stock' sought after by the capital market.
Against the backdrop of bottlenecks in core business and the Ethereum ETF boom, SBET's transformation resembles a gamble, and its high ETH proportion makes it highly susceptible to cryptocurrency price fluctuations, as ETH tends to drop more sharply than BTC.
BitMine (BMNR): From BTC mining farm to ETH treasury.
From the name, BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) is a Bitcoin mining company that relies on immersion cooling technology to mine blockchain in Texas and Trinidad.
BMNR generates Bitcoin revenue through self-mining and hosting third-party equipment.
In the first quarter of 2025, the company's revenue was 3.31 million USD, but high energy consumption and low profit margins (with a net loss of 3.29 million USD in 2024) made it struggle. Before the transformation, BMNR's market value was only 26 million USD, with its mining business constrained by high costs and fierce competition, leaving limited growth potential.
On June 30, the company announced a private fundraising plan to purchase approximately 95,000 ETH, but the actual holdings have not been disclosed. However, after the news was released, BMNR's stock price soared from 4.50 USD to 111.50 USD, skyrocketing 3000% since June.
At the same time, the rise in stock prices has also boosted BitMine's market value, currently around 5.7 billion USD. Unlike SBET, BitMine still retains its original BTC mining business, making its ETH reserve seem more like a short-term narrative.
Blockchain Technology Consensus Solutions (BTCS): Old life, new arrangements, narratives align with business.
BTCS is different from the two companies above; its reserve of ETH stands on solid historical business.
The company focuses on blockchain infrastructure and was established in 2014, being 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, mainly including running Ethereum nodes and providing data analysis platform ChainQ, offering staking and data services for DeFi and enterprises.
However, similarly, the company's financial performance is poor.
In 2024, BTCS had revenue of approximately 2.6 million USD, a year-on-year decrease of 12%, mainly due to high operating costs of nodes and increased market competition. The net loss reached 5.8 million USD, trapped in a financial predicament of high investment and low return.
BTCS has held ETH since 2021 and operates validator nodes, accumulating 14,600 ETH, much earlier than the ETH reserve plans of the aforementioned two listed companies; in June-July this year, BTCS accelerated its accumulation of ETH through AAVE DeFi lending and traditional financing, and announced on July 8 that it plans to raise 100 million USD to further expand its ETH holdings.
Objectively, increasing ETH holdings can enhance the staking capacity of validator nodes in BTCS's main business, improving gas fee income and market competitiveness. The market has responded positively to this announcement, causing BTCS's stock price to surge over 100% in a single day, rising from 2.50 USD to 5.25 USD.
Bit Digital (BTBT): Selling BTC, fully transitioning to ETH
Bit Digital, Inc. (BTBT) is a blockchain technology company based in New York, established in 2015, initially focusing on Bitcoin (BTC) mining, and gradually laying out Ethereum staking infrastructure starting in 2022, with additional businesses in GPU cloud computing power and asset management services.
Similarly, the company is also in financial loss; financial reports show that in the first quarter of 2025, revenue was 25.1 million USD, and after accounting adjustments, its loss was about 44.5 million USD.
In July 2025, the company raised 172 million USD through a public offering and sold 280 BTC, increasing its ETH holdings to 100,603 (approximately 264 million USD), with ETH accounting for 60% of its 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 status and low market value, resembling some low-market-value protocols in the cryptocurrency market that lack revenue, which quickly surged after gaining narratives and attention.
Key players behind the transformation
David Hoffman, founder of Bankless, offered a very profound insight into the phenomenon of ETH reserves in a recent article:
The strategy is simple: incorporate ETH into the balance sheet and then market ETH to Wall Street... Ethereum itself has many narrative highlights; what ETH needs is a sufficiently vibrant person who can excite Wall Street.
Connections and resources link cryptocurrency narratives to traditional capital markets. From cryptocurrency tycoons to investment banking giants, these four companies have different key figures behind them.
SharpLink: Ethereum co-founder and his crypto team
From nearly delisting to becoming the largest holder of ETH, it cannot be separated from the operations of Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.
As the founder and CEO of ConsenSys, Lubin oversees important infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as the MetaMask wallet and Infura (the latter processes over 50% of Ethereum transactions).
In May 2025, Lubin joined the SBET board as chairman, personally promoting a 463 million USD fundraising. This also relates closely to the crypto VCs who have previously invested in various projects in the Ethereum ecosystem:
His own ConsenSys led SBET's 425 million USD private placement, in collaboration with ParaFi Capital (a top venture capital in the DeFi space that invested in Uniswap, Aave), Pantera Capital (an early investor in Ethereum managing over 5 billion in assets), and Galaxy Digital (managing Ethereum ETFs) among other institutions.
Although there are community doubts that this is a conspiracy of the Ethereum Foundation, Lubin's connections and ConsenSys' resources undoubtedly give SBET the ability to become the pioneer of Ethereum's Wall Street transformation.
BitMine: The linkage 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 mastermind behind BitMine (BMNR)'s ETH reserve strategy.
Lee has been bullish on Bitcoin since 2017, predicting that ETH will reach 5,000-6,000 USD in 2024, and announced in June 2025 that he would serve as the chairman of BMNR's board.
He once mentioned the reason for betting on Ethereum during an interview:
'To put it bluntly, the real reason I choose Ethereum is that stablecoins are exploding. Circle is one of the best IPOs in five years, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 100 times EBITDA, bringing very good performance to some funds... stablecoins are the ChatGPT of the crypto world that has entered the mainstream, serving as evidence of Wall Street's attempt to 'equitize' tokens. Meanwhile, the crypto space is 'tokenizing' equity, like the dollar being tokenized.'
At the same time, he stated on CNBC that BMNR would become 'the MicroStrategy of Ethereum.'
In the 250 million USD fundraising plan proposed by Lee, we also saw the presence of the well-known Silicon Valley VC Founders Fund, founded by Peter Thiel, which has invested in SpaceX, Palantir, and has also heavily invested in cryptocurrencies since 2021, including Ethereum, Solana, and the Bullish Group, which also acquired CoinDesk.
Additionally, cryptocurrency-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 helmsman of Bit Digital (BTBT)'s ETH reserve strategy, and he also has cross-border experience from Wall Street to the cryptocurrency space.
Tabar served as the head of capital markets at Merrill Lynch, was a strategic advisor for Bitfinex from 2017 to 2018, optimizing USDT trading processes on the Ethereum network, and joined Bit Digital in 2021.
Tabar stated in a CNBC interview that Ethereum is a 'blue-chip asset reshaping the financial system,' 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 his statements about 'blue-chip assets' resonate with the narrative of revitalizing Ethereum.
In June 2025, Bit Digital raised 172 million USD through an IPO (ATM issuance) to purchase ETH; major investors included BlackRock and investment banking underwriter H.C. Wainwright, the latter having previously provided funding support for Bit Digital multiple times, reiterating in 2025 that BTBT is a 'buy' rating, with a target price of 5-7 USD.
BTCS: Actively using AAVE lending to acquire ETH
Compared to the previous three, BTCS CEO Charles Allen is relatively low-key.
However, he is also a veteran of the crypto industry, with his blockchain experience beginning with Bitcoin investment in 2011, shifting to Ethereum in 2014, and promoting BTCS to become the first blockchain company listed on NASDAQ in 2016.
In June 2025, he led BTCS in acquiring 1,000 ETH for 2.5 million USD through AAVE lending, with plans to raise 100 million USD in July, which also includes funds from ATW Partners and H.C. Wainwright, the former being a hybrid venture capital/private equity firm located in New York that invests in both debt and equity.
The commonality we can see from these four companies is:
Each company has core figures related to the cryptocurrency space, and there is overlap in the fundraising targets of different companies.
Crypto funds and traditional funds that have previously invested in Ethereum are also behind the ETH reserve craze; the capital network of the Ethereum ecosystem is extensive, which may also be another testament to the robustness of the Ethereum network itself.
Money never sleeps. As ETH reserve companies become the new meme stocks of 2025, businesses in transition will inevitably create wealth for a wave of people. So far, this cryptocurrency and stock feast has not yet come to an end.
