Author: Martin, W3C DAO
By the end of June 2025, a publicly traded company called BitMine Immersion Technologies launched an Ethereum treasury plan, increasing its holdings by over 135,000 Ethereum in the past 10 hours, bringing its total holdings to over 1.3 million. The company's chairman, Thomas Lee, publicly declared: "Our goal is to hold 5% of the global Ethereum supply."
This is not an isolated case; from traditional gaming company SharpLink to investment firm BTCS, public companies are hoarding Ethereum at an unprecedented rate. Strategic ETH reserve data indicates that as of August this year, institutional holdings of ETH have reached 8.3% of the total supply, doubling from 3% in early April.
During the same period, Ethereum's price soared from 1,385 USD to 4,788 USD, with daily trading volume climbing to a range of 4.5-4.9 billion USD. Wall Street analysts have begun to refer to ETH as "digital oil"—both the energy driving the blockchain economy and an indispensable strategic reserve in institutional asset allocation.
I. Institutional Hoarding Frenzy: Ethereum Becomes the "New Gold" for Corporate Treasuries
In 2025, the capital influx from Wall Street is surging into Ethereum at an unprecedented rate. The latest data shows that ETH held in corporate treasuries and ETFs has surpassed 8.3% of the total supply, doubling from 3% at the beginning of the year, equivalent to about 10 million ETH locked in institutional vaults. Three major players stand out:
• Bitmine Immersion Tech (formerly Bitcoin mining company) Ethereum micro-strategy BitMine has pressed the accelerator, increasing its holdings by over 135,000 Ethereum in the past 10 hours, bringing its total holdings to over 1.3 million, making it the largest enterprise-level holder of Ethereum globally. Since launching its Ethereum reserve strategy on June 30, the holdings have increased from 0 to 1.3 million in just 7 weeks, averaging over 27,000 added daily, and even more astonishingly, adding 247,000 in a single week from August 10-16, valued at over 1 billion USD! The previous announcement stated that the company plans to control approximately 5% of the global Ethereum supply, about 6 million, and has currently completed 21.7%, which clearly indicates that BitMine's Ethereum reserves have entered an exponential growth phase, and its aggressive strategy may lead to a new pattern of enterprise-level Ethereum allocation.
• The latest data shows that the number of Ethereum treasury companies has reached 70, with total holdings exceeding 3.7 million. SharpLink ranks second, holding over 728,000.
• The Ether Machine has also surpassed 340,000.
By the end of the year, the total corporate-level Ethereum holdings may surpass 8 million.
Even more astonishing is the speed of ETF fund flows. BlackRock's ETHA spot ETF has already purchased over 3.6 million Ethereum, totaling over 12 billion USD. Grayscale's Ethereum ETF has purchased nearly 2 million, totaling about 7.3 billion USD. In the past week, the net inflow to the Ethereum ETF was 2.85 billion USD, with a net inflow exceeding 1 billion USD on August 11!
II. Technological Evolution: From Merging to the Upgrade of Pectra to the Digital Oil Revolution
Ethereum's market performance in 2025 is eye-catching. The underlying transformation of Ethereum is disrupting performance ceilings. The Pectra upgrade, landing in Q1 2025, will reshape the network's structure through 12 key EIP proposals:
• EIP-7702 allows ordinary wallets to gain "smart contract-level features," enabling users to pay gas fees and recover socially, completely eliminating the fear of mnemonic phrases;
• EIP-7251 raises the validator staking limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, tripling node communication efficiency and clearing obstacles for institutional staking;
As network activity increases, ETH destruction accelerates, forming a self-reinforcing cycle of reduced supply and price support.
III. Ecological Explosion: From DeFi to RWA to the Value Reconstruction of Stablecoins
Ethereum is shedding its "Bitcoin's sidekick" label, evolving into the global settlement layer for trillion-dollar real assets on-chain.
RWA (real-world assets) has become one of the strongest narratives of 2025, covering traditional assets such as U.S. Treasuries, real estate equity, and carbon credits. BlackRock's BUIDL fund has surpassed 2.4 billion USD, with over 90% of its assets locked in Ethereum.
The integration of DeFi and AI opens a new dimension, with AI agents capable of autonomously executing dynamic interest rate lending strategies and optimizing MEV distribution mechanisms, attracting over 100,000 traditional developers into the ecosystem. The locked value in DeFi surged to 85.9 billion USD in July, hitting a three-year high, with Ethereum capturing 60% of the share.
Stablecoins reinforce Ethereum's status as the "on-chain dollar"; 54% of stablecoins (about 137.7 billion USD) circulate on Ethereum, and every transaction burns ETH, enhancing its "digital crude oil" attribute.
IV. Wall Street Trends: Why Capital Chooses Ethereum?
The most striking trend in 2025 is the large-scale inclusion of Ethereum in corporate treasury reserves. Unlike early Bitcoin, which companies viewed as a mere store of value, institutions see ETH as a "productive asset"—capable of earning income through staking and participating in the DeFi ecosystem for additional returns.
Behind the large-scale influx of institutional capital into Ethereum is its irreplaceable practical value in the crypto ecosystem. Unlike Bitcoin, which primarily serves as a store of value, Ethereum has become the operational foundation of the blockchain economy.
As the core platform for the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), by the end of 2024, Ethereum will hold 81% of the RWA market share, locking up approximately 14.9 billion USD in assets and serving over 80,000 asset holders. Analysts believe this will be a key factor driving Ethereum's strong growth in 2025.
As the cornerstone of stablecoin infrastructure, Ethereum holds a 54% share in the stablecoin market, supporting the most successful application scenarios in the crypto space. The circulating supply of stablecoins is expected to reach 200 billion USD in 2024 and may exceed 400 billion USD by 2025.
Compared to Bitcoin's "digital gold" narrative, Ethereum's appeal to institutions rests on three core advantages:
1. Productive asset attribute: Staking ETH can yield an annual return of 3-5%, making it more attractive than U.S. Treasuries during the Federal Reserve's rate-cutting cycle;
2. Compliance First-Mover Advantage: The EU MiCA regulations have classified ETH as a "compliance benchmark," and Trump's nomination of a pro-crypto SEC chairman has further cleared policy uncertainties;
3. Ecological Network Effect: 5,000 active DApps and 500,000 developers build a moat, five times the scale of competitors like Solana.
Fundstrat founder Thomas Lee asserts: "The fair value of Ethereum should be in the range of 10,000 to 15,000 USD," while Bitwise CIO's prediction is relatively conservative: ETH will surpass 7,000 USD by 2025.
V. Challenges and Future: The Path of Ethereum as "Digital Oil"
As the Bitcoin ETF drives the first wave of institutional influx, Ethereum is unleashing a combination of technical surges, ecological explosions, and compliance breakthroughs to initiate a more imaginative value narrative.
It is not only a better "digital gold" - it is also a productive asset connecting traditional finance and the crypto world, serving as the settlement layer for the trillion-dollar RWA market and the foundational infrastructure for the AI agency economy. Every additional ETH in corporate treasuries is a vote for this value reconstruction.
As Bitmine stated during its transformation: "We are not betting on token prices, but on the entire digital economy's operating system." When Ethereum sheds its old labels, a golden age belonging to the smart contract ecosystem is just beginning.
BlackRock holds 2.4 billion USD in U.S. Treasuries on Ethereum, while Sony builds a metaverse on Layer 2—the entry of the traditional world indicates that Ethereum's "institutional narrative" has only just begun.
The far-reaching impact lies in the reconstruction of financial infrastructure. As the trend of RWA (real-world assets) becoming blockchain-based accelerates, a market opportunity worth 16 trillion USD is opening up, with Ethereum as the underlying platform poised to become the core infrastructure of the next-generation financial system.
As Ethereum captures 81% of the RWA market and 54% of the stablecoin market, one question deserves investors' contemplation: Are we witnessing another Bitcoin story, or the beginning of a deeper "digital oil" revolution?
