> Global publicly listed companies are accumulating Ethereum at an unprecedented speed. From tech giants to traditional enterprises, a silent battle for digital assets has begun.
As of August 5, 2025, 59 entities have incorporated Ethereum into their balance sheets, with the top ten publicly listed companies holding a total of over 1.97 million ETH, valued at $7.1 billion (approximately 50.5 billion RMB, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 121.8%).
"We have once again increased our holdings by 15,822 ETH, with strategic reserves reaching 430,000 ETH." On August 3, publicly listed company Sharplink Gaming calmly announced this news, with the total value of its Ethereum holdings exceeding $1.6 billion.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Almost simultaneously, Jin Yong Investment announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the company has approved a budget of $10 million specifically for developing Web 3.0 businesses and investing in Ethereum and other virtual assets.
Institutional investors are no longer satisfied with mere discussions; they are incorporating Ethereum into their corporate balance sheets with real capital.
1. Publicly listed companies are scrambling to accumulate, accelerating Ethereum's strategic reserves.
In 2025, a corporate-level asset allocation competition centered around Ethereum quietly begins. Unlike individual investors, the scale and determination of publicly listed companies to purchase Ethereum are rewriting the rules of the cryptocurrency market.
After Trump signed the (Genius Act) within 24 hours, Ethereum surged 8% to break through $3,600. The act established a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins for the first time, with 90% of stablecoins and RWA (real-world assets) deployed on Ethereum, directly boosting institutional allocation demand.
In this race, several US companies have become frontrunners.
As of August 2025, Bitmine Immersion Tech holds approximately 833,100 ETH (slightly varying statistics from different sources), valued at approximately $3.006 billion, becoming the publicly listed company known to hold the most Ethereum.
Following closely is SharpLink Gaming, holding 438,200 ETH worth $1.6 billion; Bit Digital holds about 120,300 ETH; and BTCS Inc. also holds 70,000 ETH. These companies together represent the leading camp of Ethereum's 'MicroStrategy-like' trend in the US stock market.
On July 30, to celebrate Ethereum's 10th anniversary, the institutional-grade Ethereum reserve platform Ethermachine announced the purchase of nearly 15,000 ETH at a unit price of $3,809, totaling approximately $56 million.
This increase brings its total Ethereum holdings to 334,757, making it the third-largest 'micro-strategy company' holding Ethereum.
These companies are not acting on a whim. Joseph Lubin, Chairman of SharpLink Gaming's Board, is a co-founder of Ethereum, and Bitmine's strategic transformation is led by Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat. They understand the rules of the blockchain industry well, and their strategic layout indicates that Ethereum's position in corporate asset allocation is undergoing a fundamental shift.
2. Technological roadmap, the engine for Ethereum's value explosion.
Behind the frenzy of accumulation by listed companies is a firm confidence in the technological evolution and long-term value of Ethereum. In the next two years, Ethereum will face a series of major technological upgrades that could fundamentally change its application scenarios and economic model.
The integration of zkEVM into the mainnet is planned for deployment between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026. This upgrade will enable 99% of blocks to be validated within 10 seconds while significantly reducing the cost of zero-knowledge proof validation by 80%.
Technological breakthroughs bring actual value. The integration of zkEVM may further expand the market share of mainstream stablecoins on the Ethereum main chain, increasing daily gas consumption, reinforcing the ETH deflation mechanism, while providing compliance and privacy protection for traditional financial institutions, activating large-scale institutional-level DeFi application scenarios.
The introduction of the RISC-V execution architecture is expected to begin development in the second half of 2025. This transformation will improve smart contract execution efficiency by 3-5 times and reduce gas costs by 50-70%. Ethereum carries over 80% of the world's DeFi protocols and stablecoin transactions, and daily gas consumption promotes ETH deflation.
The leap in execution performance may give rise to entirely new application scenarios: high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI inference, and micro-payments, which were previously difficult to achieve on Ethereum will become possible.
The collaboration between the main chain and Layer 2 network is planned to launch in Q4 2025, aiming for seamless interoperability between the main chain and major Layer 2 networks, integrating the currently approximately $120 billion in dispersed liquidity, with a total locked value (TVL) exceeding $200 billion.
This synergistic effect will significantly enhance the capital efficiency and user experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. DeFi protocols can aggregate ecosystem-wide liquidity more efficiently, generating significant network effects.
The optimization of the validator economic model will begin in the second half of 2025, focusing on gradually lowering the minimum staking threshold from 32 ETH to potentially 1 ETH, while increasing the annual staking yield from the current 4-6% to 6-8%.
These changes may drive the ETH staking rate from the current approximately 25% to over 40%, further reducing ETH's circulating supply and strengthening deflationary expectations. If the staking rate rises from 25% to 40%, 48 million ETH will be locked, exacerbating circulation tightening. The increase in staking yields will also enhance ETH's attractiveness as a 'digital bond,' providing fundamental support for its valuation.
Ethereum's long-term vision is even grander, with the foundation having released a 10-year roadmap aimed at making Ethereum a scalable, quantum-resistant, and enterprise-grade network, targeting 10,000 TPS for Layer 1 and 1 million TPS for Layer 2 rollups.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently proposed EIP-7782, aiming to reduce block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, which will effectively enhance network throughput and transaction confirmation speed. These technological advances will provide solid support for Ethereum's positioning as the 'global programmable digital asset settlement layer.'
3. Deflationary economic model, scarcity creates value.
Vitalik Buterin emphasized the 'single-slot finality' technology in the 2025 roadmap, compressing transaction confirmation times from 15 minutes to seconds while promoting 'stateless Ethereum' to lower node operation thresholds and enhance decentralization.
The core driver for Ethereum's approach to $10,000 comes not only from technological upgrades but also from its carefully designed deflationary economic model.
"The vision of 'UltraSound Money's big deflation' will eventually come true." Blockchain researcher Haotian pointed out in an article on Ethereum's 10th anniversary, "The burning deflation mechanism of EIP-1559 and the economic model of POS staking returns are undeniably exquisite. Once the burning mechanism + POS staking returns + Layer 2 fees effectively operate, Ethereum will inevitably move toward the 'big deflation era.'
Compared to Bitcoin's limited value capture ability, Ethereum's multi-layered revenue model is demonstrating overwhelming advantages in 'long-term expectations.'
The optimization of the validator economic model will further strengthen this trend. As staking thresholds are lowered and yields increase, more ETH will be locked in staking contracts. If the ETH staking rate increases from the current 25% to over 40%, the circulating supply will significantly decrease.
Institutional investors have already sensed this trend. A significant proportion of the ETH held by publicly listed companies is used for staking to generate returns. SharpLink has nearly all of its ETH holdings staked, yielding an annual return of about 3%-4%; Bit Digital had approximately 88% of its ETH participating in validation by the end of Q1.
Strategic ETH Reserve data shows that the total value of corporate ETH reserves has exceeded $10.5 billion, accounting for 2.26% of the total ETH supply. Bitmine Immersion Tech aims to lock in 5% of the total ETH supply (about 6 million ETH), forming a long-term deflationary expectation.
Staking not only provides stable returns but also reduces market selling pressure, creating conditions for price increases. If ETH spot ETF staking passes (with over 70% probability), it will open the gateway for trillions in traditional funds.
The staking yield model gives ETH the attributes of a 'digital bond.' A conservative valuation can benchmark against US Treasury yields: if the annual yield reaches 6%, a trillion-dollar market capitalization would correspond to a price of about $8,300, and breaking through $10,000 requires a resonance of yield and circulation tightening.
4. Institutional-grade infrastructure, a bridge for traditional capital to enter.
For Ethereum to reach $10,000, it relies on the large-scale entry of traditional institutional capital, and this process is accelerating. The institutional-grade infrastructure built by publicly listed companies is becoming a bridge for traditional capital to enter the Ethereum ecosystem.
Andrew Keys, co-founder and chairman of Ethermachine, stated: "Increasing our ETH allocation on the 10th anniversary of Ethereum is a reflection of our long-term confidence in Ethereum as a foundational asset of the global decentralized economy. Our goal is to enable more investors to directly enjoy the revenue opportunities brought by ETH staking and re-staking through institutional-grade infrastructure."
Andrew Keys is an early advocate of the Ethereum ecosystem, having served as the global business development head at ConsenSys and co-founding the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), actively promoting Ethereum adoption in finance, enterprises, and government sectors. His background and actions represent the deepening penetration of Ethereum into traditional financial systems.
Ethermachine is advancing its process for listing on Nasdaq through a SPAC merger with Dynamix Corporation, expected to be completed in Q4 2025. After listing, the company will officially be listed with the stock code ETHM, becoming the world's first Nasdaq-listed company with Ethereum reserves as its core asset.
This milestone event will provide traditional investors with a compliant and convenient channel for investing in Ethereum, potentially triggering a massive influx of capital.
"The Ethereum version of MicroStrategy is definitely an epic positive catalyst. Leveraging this Wall Street-driven positive flywheel is far more effective than other 'shared security' narratives wrapped in complex technical packaging.
"Haotian emphasized in his article, 'Therefore, Ethereum needs a 'preacher' like Michael Saylor, requiring no elaborate technical packaging; just the positioning as the 'global programmable digital asset settlement layer' is enough for Wall Street to digest and speculate on for many years.'
5. Sprinting to $10,000, challenges and opportunities coexist.
Ethereum still faces multiple challenges to break through the $10,000 mark.
The execution risk of technological upgrades is paramount. Ethereum's biggest enemy 'is not the high TPS of external competitors, but rather the self-created 'technical internal competition trap.' Various stacked and complex but less practical technical narratives are consuming Ethereum's strategic focus.
Market volatility and regulatory uncertainty are also factors that cannot be ignored. The stock prices of the four major US companies holding ETH have experienced significant increases but also dramatic declines, with overall volatility being immense. For example, SharpLink and BitMine experienced over 70% deep retracement in a short time, demonstrating high volatility characteristics.
However, the positive factors supporting Ethereum's long-term value are even stronger. The integration of AI and Ethereum is seen as an important growth point for the future. 'The AI grand strategy will be Ethereum's 'redemption' opportunity. Allowing smart contracts to natively invoke AI capabilities, enabling AI agent applications to flourish on Ethereum, and making decentralized consensus the infrastructure for AI + Crypto.
"Haotian looked ahead in his article, 'Only the 'AI grand strategy' can rescue Ethereum from the financial predicament of being merely a DeFi nesting doll, redefining the narrative and boundaries of Ethereum's application.'
The threat of quantum computing is also included in Ethereum's response plan. As quantum computing technology develops, Ethereum is actively researching quantum-resistant solutions and plans to migrate to a quantum-resistant cryptographic signature scheme, which provides a safeguard for Ethereum's long-term security.
From a valuation perspective, if Ethereum's market capitalization reaches 10% of gold's market capitalization (about $2 trillion), the ETH price will exceed $16,000. With the deepening applications of Ethereum in DeFi, NFTs, RWA, gaming, and AI, this target is not out of reach.
When publicly listed companies accelerate their accumulation of Ethereum, when the technological roadmap steadily advances, and when the deflationary mechanism continues to take effect, the value foundation of Ethereum is being reinforced by multiple factors. Rather than being seen as a price target, $10,000 is more of an inevitable result of Ethereum being widely recognized as the 'global programmable digital asset settlement layer.'
Ethereum's future is not only written on the technological roadmap but also etched in the balance sheets of publicly listed companies. When Bitmine Immersion Tech holds approximately 833,100 ETH, SharpLink Gaming holds 480,000 ETH, and Bit Digital holds about 120,300 ETH, and when Jin Yong Investment allocates tens of millions of dollars specifically for investing in Ethereum, and Ethermachine prepares to become the first Nasdaq-listed company with Ethereum reserves, a corporate-level asset allocation revolution has already begun.
The perfect combination of technological breakthroughs and economic models is injecting unprecedented momentum into Ethereum. The integration of zkEVM will shorten validation time to under 10 seconds, the RISC-V architecture may reduce gas costs by 70%, and the collaboration between the main chain and Layer 2 networks is expected to integrate $120 billion in liquidity, moving toward a total locked value of $200 billion.
The current institutional holdings of 1.97 million ETH are just the prologue—when the balance sheets of publicly listed companies complete their migration from 'dollar-based' to 'ETH-based,' a trillion-dollar market capitalization will become the starting point for the next generation of financial infrastructure.
