SharpLink has built an ether treasury of 886,725 ETH without borrowing against its holdings, issuing preferred stock, or taking on debt, co-chief executive Joseph Chalom said at Injective Summit 2026 in Washington. The company is pairing its ETH accumulation with staking and decentralized-finance deployments, seeking to generate returns while maintaining an unlevered balance sheet.
Chalom said SharpLink purchased 10,000 ETH in June at an average cost of roughly $1,611 per coin. That purchase brought the company’s reported ETH position to 886,725 ETH after a period of about eight months without another major purchase, based on the timeline he described.
The approach places SharpLink among public-market companies attempting to turn crypto treasury holdings into income-producing assets rather than treating them solely as a directional bet on token prices. Chalom said the firm has also carried out stock repurchases while using public-equity financing, combining capital-market activity with its ETH acquisition strategy.
Ether moved toward $2,000 this week, while the ETH/BTC exchange rate reached 0.03, its highest level in nearly three months, according to the market moves cited in Chalom’s remarks. Those gains have improved the value of SharpLink’s existing holdings relative to the level of its reported June purchase, although the company’s long-term strategy depends heavily on the ability to deploy ETH without taking risks that outweigh staking income.
Yield strategy extends beyond validator rewards
SharpLink uses Ethereum staking rewards of about 2.5% to 3% as its base return, Chalom said. Staking involves locking ETH to help secure the Ethereum network in exchange for protocol rewards. The company then seeks to earn more through additional DeFi placements.
That pursuit of extra yield introduces a different set of risks from simply holding ETH or operating validators. DeFi strategies can involve smart-contract vulnerabilities, liquidity constraints, collateral volatility, and counterparty exposure depending on the protocol and structure used. Chalom framed SharpLink’s lack of leverage as a safeguard against a forced liquidation scenario that has damaged some crypto balance-sheet strategies during sharp market declines.
SharpLink has also formed a $125 million fund with Galaxy to deploy ETH into newer protocols, Chalom said. The fund is intended to help seed total value locked, or TVL, a measure of assets deposited into DeFi applications. Such deployments can provide young protocols with liquidity and support their early operations, while giving a large ETH holder access to potentially higher returns.
The trade-off is clear: higher yields generally require the company to move further from Ethereum’s comparatively straightforward staking model. SharpLink’s strategy will depend on whether its protocol selection and risk controls can produce returns above staking without exposing a treasury of nearly 887,000 ETH to losses that would exceed the additional income.
Ethereum positioning underpins treasury case
Chalom tied SharpLink’s ETH strategy to Ethereum’s current role in stablecoins, tokenized assets, and decentralized finance. He said Ethereum accounts for more than half of stablecoin transaction volume, close to 60% of tokenized real-world assets, and the majority of DeFi activity.
He also described Ethereum as the longest-running blockchain after Bitcoin to operate without downtime. For a corporate treasury strategy, that operating history is part of the appeal: the company is not only buying a token, but also gaining exposure to a network used for settlement, collateral, stablecoin transfers, and financial applications.
Chalom said the Ethereum Foundation has recently separated three groups and that financing support for the spin-outs came from Joseph Lubin, Lee, and SharpLink. He identified the groups as ETH Labs, which is focused on scaling technology for institutional use; Ethereum Institutional, which is focused on market outreach; and EthSystems, which is developing privacy and compliance tools.
The three initiatives reflect areas that could shape institutional use of Ethereum. Scaling work targets transaction capacity and cost, privacy tools could support organizations that need to protect commercial information, and institutional outreach aims to connect network infrastructure with financial firms and corporate users.
Policy debate could shape DeFi deployments
Chalom said tokenization has developed for roughly eight to nine years but has moved slowly because regulatory clarity has lagged behind technical development. He divided the emerging on-chain financial system into four layers: stablecoins as a value layer, tokenized assets as an exposure layer, DeFi as an execution layer, and “agentic” systems as an automation layer.
In that framework, stablecoins can serve as settlement instruments, tokenized securities or funds can represent ownership or economic exposure, and DeFi protocols can execute lending, borrowing, swaps, and collateral management. Automated systems could eventually handle parts of those processes under predefined rules.
Chalom also discussed the proposed Clarity Act, describing it as legislation that would distinguish between DeFi software providers and protocols or businesses that take custody of customer assets. Under his description, entities holding customer assets would face regulatory obligations that may not apply in the same way to developers of open software.
The bill’s eventual wording and legislative path would determine its practical effect. Chalom said clearer rules could affect market momentum and the speed at which institutions deploy capital into tokenized and DeFi-based products.
Around-the-clock markets create demand for on-chain collateral
Chalom pointed to plans by Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange to expand trading hours toward nearly continuous schedules. Longer trading windows would place greater pressure on traditional post-trade systems, which often operate through more limited settlement and collateral cycles.
He also cited the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, saying it processes about $400 trillion in transactions annually and has introduced tokenized on-chain collateral. Tokenized collateral could allow financial institutions to move eligible assets and adjust margin positions more quickly across extended trading sessions, though large-scale adoption depends on legal treatment, interoperability, and risk-management standards.
SharpLink’s ETH treasury strategy sits directly inside that larger argument. The company is wagering that Ethereum will remain a central platform for stablecoin settlement, tokenized assets, and DeFi execution, while its unlevered structure is designed to let it hold through the volatility that has repeatedly tested crypto-focused corporate balance sheets.
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