- Ethereum treasury companies are proliferating.
- Institutions are leery, said Matthew Sigel of VanEck.
- 'Useful asset' draws distinctions with Bitcoin.
Firms are raising capital, buying Ether, and betting their share prices will rise.
But as the momentum builds, one question looms: is there a lasting investor appetite for Ethereum treasuries?
Not among institutions, reckons Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets at VanEck.
“Not yet, but maybe that’s where the opportunity is,” he said on a recent episode of The Mining Pod.
What began with Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-hodling firm, Strategy, has now spread to Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.
$1.3 billion
The most aggressive entrant so far is SharpLink Gaming, an online casino platform that is betting its balance sheet on Ether.
Over the last few weeks, the company has amassed more than $1.3 billion worth of Ether as it buys “tens of millions of dollars” daily, according to Joe Lubin, the CEO of Consensys and Ethereum co-founder,who recently became the firm’s chairman.
SharpLink and BitMine Immersion Technologies — a little known Bitcoin miner turned Ethereum treasury — are trading at nearly double the value of their Ether holdings.
They’re not alone. More than 60 companies now hold Ethereum as a reserve asset, collectively owning over 1.8 million Ether or about $6.2 billion.
And while that’s still less than what the 157 Bitcoin treasury companies hold, it’s growing fast.
Big gains
For Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, this Ether accumulation is creating a structural imbalance in the market that will spur big gains.
“Since mid-May, exchange-traded products and public companies have bought 2.83 million Ether — 32 times more than what’s been newly issued,” Hougan said in a July 22 note to investors.
“No wonder the price of [Ethereum] has soared.”
Ethereum has rallied 60%, to about $3,600, in the past 30 days.
Ethereum treasury companies have two things going for them, according to market watchers.
For one, the space has fewer players than the Bitcoin treasury sector.
“It’s less crowded,” said Sigel, which might lure more companies into deploying capital to an Ethereum treasury company.
Then there’s Ethereum’s utility.
“Ethereum is a useful asset,” head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise Jeff Park said in a July 8 interview on the Wolf of All Streets podcast.
“Bitcoin stores value. But Ethereum is productive — it earns yield.”
Cash flow is something traditional investors know, and look for.
The market decides
Still, analysts are not just cautious, but actively sounding the alarm.
Even though Ethereum treasuries are a newer phenomenon, they carry echoes of the same concerns that have dogged the Bitcoin playbook: aggressive “promote” structures that reward insiders, speculative valuations, and frothy markets driven more by narrative than fundamentals.
That hasn’t slowed the hype.
And as Ether prices continue to soar, the market may soon have to decide: are Ethereum treasury companies a new form of financial innovation — or just the latest speculative trade wrapped in a corporate wrapper?
Pedro Solimano is DL News’ Buenos Aires-based markets correspondent. Got at a tip? Email him at psolimano@dlnews.com.
