Its not just bitcoin. Companies are now adding ethereum to their balance sheets.
It's not just bitcoin (BTC-USD) that corporate treasuries are buying. A handful of firms are scooping up ethereum — or its native token, ether (ETH-USD) — as a way to gain exposure to the tech infrastructure behind decentralized finance and digital assets.
So far, the companies taking this approach are mainly smaller names in the crypto world, such as BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), chaired by Fundstrat's Tom Lee. One larger player — Coinbase Global (COIN), the parent company of trading network Coinbase — has more than $440 million in holdings, according to crypto and investment tracker CoinGecko.
When Coinbase announced in a 2021 blog post that it would become the first publicly traded company to hold ethereum and other assets, in addition to bitcoin, it stated, "We believe that in the future, more and more companies will hold crypto assets on their balance sheet."
Ethereum has surged 60% over the past month to hover near $3,800, its highest level since January. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has yet to reclaim its 2021 high north of $4,600.
Ethereum allows developers to write programs or contracts that run entirely on its blockchain, or network. It currently leads as the dominant infrastructure that allows businesses and consumers to transact with each other directly without banks, with a market share of more than 51%.
"Ethereum lets anyone — whether it's a crypto project, a factory, an artist, an influencer — create their own token and thus their own community and incentivize communities with an economy basically," Ray Youssef, CEO of crypto marketplace NoOnes, told Yahoo Finance.
He called tokenization ethereum's "killer app."
"You could argue it has more utility than bitcoin," he said.
That utility is why firms like BitMine and SharpLink Gaming have increasingly been raising capital to buy ETH, similar to how Strategy (MSTR) and a slew of other companies have added bitcoin to their balance sheets in recent months.
Read more: Can you buy crypto with a credit card? See the pros and cons.
As with bitcoin, the approach can be risky due to volatile prices. Ethereum prices tumbled in April when President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs announcement roiled markets. The rewards have not been as high as those that bitcoin has offered either: The return on ethereum year to date is 14%, versus bitcoin's 26%.
Crypto miner BitMine Immersion Technologies recently announced it holds more than $1 billion in ethereum, or roughly 300,000 tokens. The company, which went public on June 5, has positioned itself as a pure-play on ethereum, betting that owning it is akin to owning the underlying infrastructure behind the convergence of crypto and financial services.
Content Original Link:
" target="_blank">
