Published: August 13th, 2025
Gamble-tech firm SharpLink Gaming is making a big bet on Ethereum, raising $400 million to expand its already hefty ETH treasury. The cash-for-equity deal will see the company lift its total Ether holdings to more than USD 3 billion.
A press release published Monday said SharpLink hopes to sell its shares for $21.76 each to five institutional investors. The sale is expected to close next week if all conditions are met.
SharpLink co-CEO Joseph Chalom said ‘the scale of these investments and the rapid timeline for completion reflects both investor trust in SharpLink and the growing recognition of Ethereum's transformative potential.’ He also said the company had already raised USD 900 million the previous week.
Investors seemed unsure how to take the news. SharpLink shares (SBET) started the day at ca. USD 24 before climbing to USD 28. It finished the day down almost 7 per cent at $22.03. Still, SBET is up more than 16 per cent over the previous seven days.
The company's fundraising bid is happening just as the price of the world's second-largest crypto surges back toward its all-time-high, driven up in no small part by a surge in corporate interest.
Publicly listed companies including Bit Digital, EtherMachine, and BitMine cumulatively hold several billion dollars of ETH in their corporate treasuries.
At time of writing Ethereum was trading at ca. USD 4,629, up more than 27 per cent over the past week and more than 50 per cent over the last month. Ethereum is now in sight of its all-time-high of $4,878, according to CoinMarketCap.
In early May 2025, Ethereum investment products pulled in more than USD 198 million worth of inflows as Ether (ETH) climbed above USD 2,700, a major jump on the USD 1.5 million seen a week prior.
Across the board, figures released by crypto asset manager CoinShares showed that investors had stuffed USD 770 million into digital asset investment products. The total includes crypto spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), lifting inflows for the year-to-date above USD 7.2 billion, a new yearly high.
‘Ethereum has been the standout performer in crypto markets,’ CoinShares analysts said, pointing out that Solana-based funds saw outflows in the same period of USD 1 million.
Data from CoinGecko showed that ETH's price had dropped back to USD 2,400 on Tuesday May 6th, a 4.3 per cent decline in 24 hours. Despite that setback the asset's price was still up 50 per cent for the past month, and much higher than the USD 1,850 price it posted at the start of the month.
Just two weeks prior, Ethereum launched its long-awaited Pectra network upgrade. Among the biggest network changes were improved scaling solutions that made DeFi transactions on Ethereum more affordable. It also raised the validator limit for staking Ethereum, a move designed to make larger transactions more affordable and prompt new whale action.
While ETH-tracking funds showed impressive strength, Bitcoin investment products still pulled in more cash. After attracting USD 555 million the previous week, Bitcoin-tracking funds notched a total of USD 7.2 billion in inflows for the year-to-date, capturing the majority of crypto fund inflows.
In December of last year, both BTC and ETH spot ETF inflows fell dramatically and suffered a record day of outflows off the back of a hawkish speech by US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.
Data from CoinShares showed that investors moved USD 308 million into crypto funds last week, much of it into Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. But by Thursday, December 19th, investors had changed course and moved a record USD 575 million out of crypto instruments.
On Friday, December 20th, that figure had risen to just over one billion USD.
In an accompanying analysis, CoinShares said the sudden backtrack was triggered by the Fed's ‘hawkish dot plot’. Crypto funds had surged by more than USD 3.2 billion over the course of the previous week (wc December 9th), meaning inflows cratered by more than 90 per cent week-over-week.
The Fed cut interest rates in line with market expectations, Fed chair Jerome Powell also gave a speech saying the US central bank would not cut so robustly next year. Investor sentiment turned sour, CoinShares says, as assets like Bitcoin typically perform better against a backdrop of low interest rates.
After Powell's speech, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major coins fell sharply. Bitcoin dropped to USD 98,326 after trending down by 12 per cent over a seven-day period. The week prior, BTC hit a new all-time high of USD 108,000.
In mid-August 2024, Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw inflows of USD 1.34 billion as BTC-devoted funds chalked up their fifth-best week for the 2024 year to date.
Data from CoinShares showed that close to USD 1.44 billion in assets found their way into exchange traded crypto funds generally, bringing the year-to-date total to an all-time high of USD 17.8 billion, well in excess of 2021's comparable YTD figure of USD 10.5 billion.
Bitcoin pulled in the lion's share of crypto fund inflows, which is not surprising. Neither is the fact that USD 1.3 billion of the total inflows to crypto funds came from American investors.
The rise had been steady, with mid-month inflows tripling the USD 441 million mark achieved just seven days prior, when crypto fund inflows turned positive again after three weeks of losses.
Echoing CoinShares' findings, an analysis from Farside Investors suggested that US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a full week of daily inflows in late July, posting more than USD 310 million in net inflows on Friday, July 12th, 2024 alone. That was the highest level seen in over a month.
CoinShares' numbers also had Ethereum racking up positive inflows of around USD 72 million as crypto traders prepared for the expected approval of spot Ethereum ETFs. Altcoins like Solana, Avalanche benefitted from bullish sentiment, with Solana-based funds attracting close to USD 4.3 million in inflows.
