Crypto
Joseph Lubin, the Founder and CEO of Consensys and Co-Founder of Ethereum
Joseph Lubin, cofounder of ethereum and Consensys, attends the Day 2 of the RISE Conference (3studio/Getty Images)

SharpLink Gaming announces $425 million funding for ethereum treasury strategy, sending shares flying

Joseph Lubin, the cofounder of the blockchain network and Consensys, will act as the chairman of SharpLink’s board of directors.

Sage D. Young

The appetite for public companies to adopt cryptocurrencies as a treasury reserve asset continues to grow, with ethereum now getting its own iteration of Michael Saylor’s Strategy. 

On Tuesday, sportsbook marketing firm SharpLink Gaming announced it raised roughly $425 million through a private investment in public equity offering to adopt an ethereum treasury playbook, helping the company’s stock jump over 400%. 

SharpLink shares spiked as high as $52 before closing at $35.80, a bid up since Friday, when they were trading at about $6. The $425 million will be used to acquire ethereum and serve as the firm’s primary treasury reserve asset, according to the firm’s press release.

The price of ethereum has increased 5.6% in the last 24 hours to trade hands at the $2,680 level, outpacing the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, data pulled from CoinGecko shows. The market cap of ethereum and SharpLink now stand at roughly $323 billion and $24 million, respectively. 

Ethereum cofounder Joseph Lubin will become the chairman of SharpLink’s board of directors when the offering closes, which is expected to occur on Thursday.

Ethereum software development firm Consensys, founded by Lubin as well, led the investment round. It was joined by other venture capital firms and infrastructure providers like Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, and Primitive Ventures.

Maria Shen, the general partner for Electric Capital, which participated in the capital raise, told Sherwood News that there’s “great momentum” in the ethereum ecosystem stemming from the network’s latest Pectra upgrade and new leadership in the Ethereum Foundation, a nonprofit organization supporting the network. “There’s also a growing realization that ethereum is a great home for institutional capital,” Shen said.

SharpLink’s announcement comes after several public companies have adopted rival cryptocurrencies as reserve assets. 

Consumer goods company Upexi holds 597,002 solana tokens worth about $106.5 million, while DeFi Dev Corp has 609,233 Solana coins in its treasury, representing $108.4 million.  

Strategy, which started as a software enterprise business, has turned into a bitcoin vacuum machine, possessing 580,250 bitcoin worth $64 billion at current prices. Strategy’s latest acquisition was announced on Monday, when cofounder Michael Saylor disclosed that the firm scooped up an additional 4,020 bitcoin for about $427 million.

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Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter. 

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows. 

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

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SEC and CFTC issue new guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto assets

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, issued an interpretation clarifying how federal securities law applies to crypto assets, a first step toward developing a clearer regulatory framework. 

The interpretive guidance introduces a token taxonomy for different types of cryptocurrencies, with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins adding that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”

Examples of a digital commodity, “a crypto asset that is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a crypto system that is ‘functional,’” include:

The guidance also includes definitions of digital collectibles (such as NFTs), stablecoins, digital tools, and digital securities (such as tokenized real-world assets and stocks).

This is a monumental step in the mainstream adoption of the industry and clears a hurdle in how crypto can operate going forward, according to David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund. “This will allow new token designs with the confidence that their existence does not require registration with the SEC, etc.,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Despite the clarification efforts from the two organizations, the market capitalization of the crypto industry has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours as each of the tokens mentioned in the guidance are trading lower in the period, data from CoinGecko shows.

The joint agency action also complements congressional efforts to turn a crypto market structure framework into law. With the goal of providing regulations on the offer and sale of digital commodities, the CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives last year and is now sitting in the Senate.

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