which one’s the best crypto asset well Bitcoin is
the best crypto asset okay what’s the second best there is no second best crypto asset or is there
bitcoin bonkers Michael Sailor has been riding the no second best mantra into the sunset ever
since his humrum software company Micro Strategy mutated into the BTC guzzling leviathan that it
is today but in a daring challenge to Solorian orthodoxy one company has decided to do for
Ethereum what strategy does for Bitcoin and if you think that sounds brave wait until you
find out about the peculiar scheme that casts this unlikely company in Ethereum’s starring role
my name is Guy and you’re watching the Coin Bureau so like Sailor says there is no second best
crypto asset and for years there was no second best Bitcoin corporate treasury either but since
2023 Sailor imitators have started popping up left and right first slowly then all at once early
on we saw names like Metaplanet the Japanese investment firm Semler Scientific a US health tech
company and Genius Group a Singaporean education firm announcing BTC corporate treasury strategies
but more recently the field has become seriously crowded this year K33 Research identified more
than 70 publicly traded companies that have joined the corporate treasury accumulation race these now
include GameStop which spent $500 million to buy $4,710 BTC in May 21 a new joint venture between
Tether Soft Bank and Caner and Nakamoto recently founded by David Bailey a crypto adviser to US
President Donald Trump heck even K33 itself is now adopting a corporate BTC treasury strategy
then there’s US President Donald Trump’s Trump Media and Technology Group which recently launched
a corporate Bitcoin Treasury Strategy backed by a $2.5 billion private placement from around 50
institutional investors all of these competitors will be eating away at the mind share and market
formerly monopolized by Strategy and this is one of the reasons perhaps that Strategy’s BTC
purchases have slowed recently so now that investors have so many leverage BTC stocks to bet
on what’s the angle for CEOs who want to follow the Sailor playbook how can they capture enough
attention to pump stock well I’ve got an idea hear me out there is a second best crypto asset yes I
can see the headlines now instead of BTC you could make history as the first publicly traded company
to announce that your primary treasury reserve asset is ETH i don’t think that one’s been done
yet so it’s worth a shot right especially if you only have a tiny corporate treasury to begin with
then you’ve really got nothing to lose i guess if you’re a larger company with substantial treasury
holdings then this would be a riskier proposition because you know ETH isn’t exactly famous for its
wealth storing properties these days although you may have noticed ETH has been outperforming BTC
recently which is pretty encouraging and if you’re planning on buying or selling ETH or any other
crypto on an exchange then be sure to check out the Coin Bureau deals page first linked to down
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than you might think so take advantage of them while they’re still available anyway I won’t beat
around the bush any further if you haven’t heard Consensus and a gaggle of top crypto VCs have just
saved a tiny company from going out of business by handing it hundreds of millions of dollars to
buy and hold ETH as its corporate treasury’s primary reserve asset in an abrupt pivot from its
struggling core business this company now says it wants to become the biggest publicly traded
holder of ETH to which we can only say well good luck flipping Coinbase which is Ethereum’s
largest node operator holding 6.6 million ETH and controlling 11.4% of the entire supply of staked
ETH anyway if you’re thinking that this company fancies itself as the strategy of Ethereum
then you’re on the right track because they are indeed following Sailor’s playbook before we
get into that though there are a lot of questions that need answering mostly starting with who and
why so let’s start with who who is this company that Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin Consensus
and a who’s who of crypto VCs have appointed as the strategy of Ethereum well the company is
called Sharplink and it describes itself as quote “a trusted marketing partner to leading
sports books and online casino gaming operators worldwide.” In other words Sharlink provides
ads for online gambling websites sharlink’s main business is the gambling affiliate marketing
network called PAS.net which was founded in 2008 sharlink itself was only founded in 2019 though
so it must have acquired PAS at some point after that the PAS.net website appears derelictked as
its latest updates page was last updated once in 2020 and prior to that twice in 2017 the PAS
Facebook page was last updated in 2019 and the official X account hasn’t posted since 2016
sharlink also has not posted on X since 2021 although its bio now reads quote “Sharplink is one
of the first NASDAQ listed companies to develop a treasury strategy centered on ETH.” Yeah about
that with just 26 employees listed on LinkedIn and minimal revenue Sharlink is unusually small
for a publicly traded company and certainly too small to IPO by itself and yet there it is on the
NASDAQ exchange under the ticker SBET if you open up SBET on Trading View you’ll find what looks
like a dead chart where demand has long been absent the share price has been in an unbroken
downtrend for years and flatlined well under $3 per share in late May 2025 until that is the
stock quite suddenly pulled a 44x at the end of May it reached a high of $124 in the final days of
the month and promptly collapsed back under $50 by the 2nd of June this is the classic candlestick
formation that appears when cryptos powers that be abruptly appoint a random micro cap company as
the strategy of Ethereum so not that surprising really what’s more surprising than the recent
pump and dump is the charts price history because as it turns out $124 is nowhere near SBET’s
all-time high which is actually let’s see now $25,560 reached in the year 2000 wait what yep
if you switch to the monthly time frame you’ll find that this stock has a rich tradition of
pumping and dumping dating all the way back to 1997 when it was first listed on the NASDAQ it
appears to have IPOed at a price of more than $10,000 per share in the spring of 97 then dumped
to below $1,000 by August 1998 then it rallied to its all-time high of $25,560 at the height of
the dot bubble in March 2000 before collapsing back down to around $1,000 by September 2022 and
ever since then the chart has looked like it’s been dying a slow death with long periods of low
volatility punctuated by ever smaller pumps and dumps every few years and with long wicks all
over the place hinting at market manipulation so what’s the real story here how can the stock of
Sharplink which was founded in 2019 have a price history predating that by 22 years well the answer
is tied to another mystery which is how on earth a company like this makes it onto the NASDAQ with a
market cap as low as $1.85 million as recently as the 21st of May Sharlink is considered a nano cap
stock ipoing is a notoriously time-conuming and expensive process and even if Sharlink had the
financial resources to IPO it likely would not make it past the many other strict requirements
needed for a listing on the NASDAQ ceo Rob Fythian told the Minnesota Star Tribune in 2021 that
Sharlink was also too small to be acquired by a specialurpose acquisition company or spa which
is basically a shell company that lists itself on a stock exchange and then acquires one or more
companies with assets and some kind of purpose but Fythian was determined to get a coveted NASDAQ
listing and so he opted for a shortcut known as a reverse merger this is where a small company
acquires another usually larger company that is already listed on a public stock exchange then
the smaller company can just pull a switcheroo and change the ticker of the publicly traded company
it acquired to its own in doing so it can leaprog all of the costs time and regulatory requirements
associated with doing an IPO of its own nice so in 2021 Sharlink merged with a NASDAQ listed
Israeli call center software company called Mayor Telecoms and became a limited liability company
incorporated in Israel in the process it changed Mayor Telecoms’ ticker from MTSL to SBET and
that is why Sharlink now inhabits a chart that is down 99.82% 82% over the last 27 years and
gets to prominently feature the NASDAQ logo on its website now funnily enough after buying a
spot on the NASDAQ Sharlink actually struggled to stay there due to compliance issues specifically
they struggled to comply with NASDAQ’s rules that companies must maintain a minimum share price of
$1 per share and a minimum shareholder equity of $2.5 million upon merging with Mayor Telecom the
chart pumped to around $2,145 but quickly came crashing back down to $660 ever since then SBET
has been on a sad slippery slide into the abyss and behind the chart was a company that was
leaking money like a civ according to Sharp Link’s most recent financial statements its
revenue fell 26.1% from 2023 to 2024 and after recording a net loss of more than $14 million the
company’s cash on hand also fell by 42% to just $1.4 million it’s no wonder then that Sharplink
share price floundered under $1 for long enough to be at risk of delisting from the NASDAQ as
recently as May 2025 no less so faced with a corporate existential crisis what’s a CEO to do
well desperate times call for desperate measures last year Sharlink sold two of its sports gambling
businesses for $22.5 million in cash and used the proceeds to pay off its outstanding debts of
around $19.4 million to avert a D-listing disaster Sharlink then completed a 12:1 reverse stock split
meaning that for every 12 shares a shareholder had previously held they would thereafter hold
one well that’s one way to increase your share price i suppose the company also managed to
sell enough shares to raise $4.5 million in May coming back into compliance with the NASDAQ
minimum requirement rules sharlink then ended its stay in Israel by completing a domestication
merger with a new entity incorporated in Delaware called Sharlink Gaming the new entity then brought
on three new distinguished looking independent directors to serve on the board with Fifthian
remaining as CEO these are Robert Gutkowski a former president of New York’s Madison Square
Garden Leslie Burnernhard founder and longtime CEO of a newspaper advertising company and Obie
McKenzie who was a managing director at BlackRock for 18 years sharplink Gaming’s new crack team of
executives then set about a formal review process to quote evaluate strategic alternatives
that would quote drive growth and create and maximize value for shareholders now what
exactly went on in those meetings is a mystery rob Fifthian explained in a press release quote
“We carefully evaluated more than two dozen compelling opportunities and we determined
that the combination of market expansion cost efficiency security and player demand makes
crypto gaming one of the most promising growth opportunities in the online gaming industry
today.” Yes fair enough nothing surprising about that but just how this review process ended
in Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin joining the board of Sharlink Gaming and the company being
handed $425 million by Consensus Galaxy Digital Onondo Panta Capital Electric Capital and at
least eight other crypto VCs is a question we dearly love to know the answer to and by the way
if you’re enjoying the video so far then smash that like button to let us know and subscribe to
the channel and ping that notification bell so you don’t miss the next one so then we now know the
who of this whole situation but the why is a bit more elusive sharpink’s motive is no mystery of
course anyone leading a company on the verge of extinction would give the shirt off their back to
sign a $425 million funding round but what’s in it for Luben Consensus and these crypto VCs well
we think it’s safe to assume that all are ETH whales and for an ETH whale the idea of getting
someone to do for ETH what Michael Sailor does for BTC must sound like a pretty good punt whatever
you make of Sailor and his antics he’s certainly a good salesman the closest thing Ethereum has
to a raging bull mascot like Sailor is Vitalic Butin and suffice it to say he has about as much
in common with Michael Sailor as Bernie Sanders does with Dave Portoy so ETH Wales are handing
a company hundreds of millions of dollars to buy ETH and in the process create a spectacle that
creates a buzz around ETH and hopefully more demand for it i can see the logic here if all
goes well it should be very bullish for ETH so we’ll be keeping an eye on Sharink from now on
this scheme also fits into the bigger picture unfolding in the Ethereum ecosystem of late as
we all know ETH has been the butt of many jokes over the last year or two having underperformed
BTC and many other altcoins notably Soul quite severely sentiment has been down in the dumps
and frustrated ETH holders have been asking why leaders in the Ethereum ecosystem are more
preoccupied with building layer 2 infrastructure than they are with shilling ETH the Ethereum
Foundation has been the target of a lot of this criticism which is also in part because of
its selling of ETH and perceived lethagy in the face of Salana stealing the spotlight since late
2023 so the foundation responded this March with a shakeup in its leadership and layoffs in its
research and development team newly appointed co-executive directors Sha Wong and Tomas K
stanchack replaced Ayam Miaguchi who moved into the newly created role of foundation president
stanchack has vowed to implement a simplified road map focused on scaling the layer 1 scaling
blobs and improving user experience some of which was accomplished by the Petra upgrade that
went live in May meanwhile Vitalik himself has proposed streamlining Ethereum’s codebase to boost
developer adoption and scalability he’s announced an ambitious plan to scale the Ethereum layer 1
by 10x within a year by for example increasing the gas limit from 30 to 36 million and implementing
stateless clients but despite Vitalik occasionally obliging requests to bull ETH on Twitter it would
be a bit off brand for either him or the Ethereum Foundation to openly promote schemes to pump
ETH so instead it looks like his task has been outsourced to Etherealized spearheaded by VC Ramen
and Danny Ryan who led Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake etherealize was launched in January
of this year primarily as a marketing offensive to woo institutional investors on Wall Street its
homepage proudly boasts quote Ethereum is open for business which is a more concise and clear
message than we’re used to hearing coming from the Ethereum ecosystem the company is also building
Ethereum-based enterprise product suites in an effort to improve the narrative around ETH among
institutions now this sounds like a task fit for Consensus the developer of MetaMask and many of
the most important developer tools on Ethereum but instead Consensus which was founded by CEO Joseph
Lubin has embarked on this slightly odd sailor inspired side quest the official announcement
on Consensus’s website reads quote “We’re proud to announce our role as the lead investor in
Sharplink Gaming’s $425 million fund raise.” It then proceeds to talk up Ethereum’s role as quote
the foundation of a programmable global economy and quote cuttingedge blockchain infrastructure
but spares very few words for the beneficiary of this enormous investment basically all that
consensus has to say about ETH’s new champion is that quote “Sharplink Gaming NASDAQ SBET is a
public company aligned with our vision of Ethereum as a new kind of economic infrastructure forming
the trust layer of the internet nothing unusual about Consensus plugging Ethereum it’s just a
little odd that they have so little to say about the people they just handed hundreds of millions
of dollars to.” The announcement adds that Luben will become the new chairman of Sharplink where
quote his leadership and expertise will help guide Sharplink’s integration of Ethereum into
its core operations and long-term vision but the detail ends there sharplink’s strategy differs
slightly from the Sailor playbook however as it says it will engage in staking and other uses
of ETH in DeFi protocols to generate revenue however it looks like the Apple hasn’t fallen too
far from the tree because Sharlink recently filed with the SEC to sell up to 1 billion in common
stock in order to buy more ETH now it’s still very early days but if this thing gets off the ground
and starts hoovering up massive amounts of ETH on a regular basis then it’s bound to be bullish for
the asset which may become deflationary once again but it’s worth asking whether investors will be
persuaded to pile money into a corporate vehicle for ETH accumulation the same way they have
for strategy and its imitators eth and BTC are separated by many important differences including
for example the maximum supply for BTC it’s 21 million while for ETH it’s uh well there is no
maximum the maximum supply is actually infinite and depends on demand to outstrip new issuance
to ward off inflation the ETH chart shows quite clearly that when ETH rallies to a new high it
tends not to stay there for very long unlike BTC which is in a much clearer long-term uptrend maybe
ETH is in a long-term accumulation phase pending a massive breakout that will create a new price
floor perhaps above the current resistance at $4,000 but if the ETH ETFs are anything to go by
Sharp Link could face an uphill battle as massive demand has not yet materialized from Tradfi
whatever the case though we say good luck but also why Sharlink well the best answer that we
can come up with is that Sharlink was chosen by Consensus because of rather than despite its
microscopic market cap as this maximizes the spectacle of the stock pumping out of the abyss
just don’t count on SBET breaking a new all-time high anytime soon okay I’ll leave it there for now
folks if you’d like to learn more about Ethereum strategic pivot and how it could affect the price
of ETH then go ahead and check out this video over here as always thank you for watching and
I’ll see you next time this is Guy over and out
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