jakiro
Author: Martin
Global listed companies are hoarding Ethereum at an unprecedented rate, from technology giants to traditional companies, a silent battle for digital assets has begun.
As of August 5, 2025, 59 physical enterprises included Ethereum in their balance sheets, and the total holdings of the top ten listed companies exceeded 1.97 million ETH, with a total value of US$7.1 billion (approximately RMB 50.5 billion), an increase of 121.8% month-on-month.
“We have once again increased our holdings of 15,822 ETH, and our strategic reserves have reached 430,000..”On August 3, listed company Sharplink Gaming calmly announced the news in an announcement, with the total value of its Ethereum holdings exceeding $1.6 billion.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Almost at the same time, Jinyong Investment issued an announcement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and the company has approved it.A total budget of US$10 million is dedicated to developing Web3.0 business and investing in virtual assets such as Ethereum.
Institutional investors are no longer satisfied with talking about paper, but include Ethereum in real money and money.
1. Listed companies are rushing to raise funds, and Ethereum’s strategic reserves are accelerating
In 2025, an enterprise-level asset allocation competition around Ethereum quietly kicked off.Unlike individual investors, the scale and determination of listed companies to purchase Ethereum are rewriting the rules of the game in the cryptocurrency market.
Within 24 hours after Trump signed the Genius Act,Ethereum soared by 8% and broke through $3,600. The bill established a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins for the first time, while 90% of stablecoins and RWA (real-world assets) were deployed on Ethereum, directly push up institutional configuration needs.
In this competition, several U.S. stock companies have become leaders.
As of August 2025,Bitmine Immersion Tech holds about 833,100 ETH (slightly different statistics from different sources) and is worth about $3.006 billion., becoming the listed company with the largest number of Ethereum known to hold.
Following closely behind isSharpLink Gaming has a position of 438,200 ETH, worth US$1.6 billion; Bit Digital holds about 120,300 ETH; and BTCS Inc. also holds 70,000 ETH, these companies together constitute the representative camp of Ethereum’s “micro-strategic” trend in the US stock market.
On July 30, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Ethereum,Ethermachine, an institutional-level Ethereum reserve platform, announced that it would purchase nearly 15,000 ETH at a unit price of US$3,809, with a total amount of approximately US$56 million.
This increase in holdings has brought its total holdings of Ethereum to 334,757, making it the third largest “micro-strategy company” to hold Ethereum.
These companies are not on a whim. Joseph Lubin, chairman of SharpLink Gaming, is co-founder of Ethereum, and Bitmine’s strategic transformation is led by Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee.They are well aware of the laws of the blockchain industry, and their strategic layout indicates that Ethereum’s position in enterprise asset allocation is undergoing a fundamental change.
2. Technology roadmap, the engine of Ethereum’s value explosion
Behind the crazy hoarding of listed companies is the firm confidence in the evolution of Ethereum technology and long-term value.In the next two years, Ethereum will usher in a series of major technological upgrades, These breakthroughs may completely change their application scenarios and economic models.
The integration of zkEVM into the main network is planned to be deployed from the fourth quarter of 2025 to the second quarter of 2026.This upgrade will enable 99% of blocks to be validated within 10 seconds.At the same time, the cost of zero-knowledge proof verification will be greatly reduced by 80%.
Technological breakthroughs bring real value.The integration of zkEVM may further expand the market share of mainstream stablecoins on the Ethereum main chain.Increase daily Gas consumption and strengthen the ETH deflation mechanism, and at the same time provide compliance and privacy guarantees for traditional financial institutions and activate large-scale institutional-level DeFi application scenarios.
The introduction of RISC-V execution architecture is expected to start research and development in the second half of 2025.This change will increase the efficiency of smart contract execution by 3-5 times and reduce Gas costs by 50-70%.Ethereum carries more than 80% of the world’s DeFi protocols and stablecoin transactions, and daily Gas consumption drives ETH deflation.
A jump in execution performance may lead to new application scenarios:High-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI reasoning, small paymentApplications that were difficult to implement on Ethereum in the past will become possible.
The main chain and layer 2 network ecosystem collaboration plan was launched in the fourth quarter of 2025. The goal is to achieve seamless interoperability between the main chain and the main layer 2 network, integrating the current decentralized liquidity of approximately US$120 billion, and making the total locked value (TVL) exceed US$200 billion.
This synergistic effect will significantly improve the capital efficiency and user experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem, DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate the entire ecological liquidity and produce significant network effects.
Verifier economic model optimization will be promoted from the second half of 2025.The core is to gradually lower the minimum pledge threshold for validators, from 32ETH to 1ETH, and at the same time increase the annualized pledge return from the current 4-6% to 6-8%.
These changes may drive the ETH staking rate to increase from the current 25% to more than 40%, further reduce the circulation and supply of ETH and strengthen deflation expectations.If the pledge rate rises from 25% to 40%, 48 million ETH will be locked, further aggravating circulation deflation.The increase in pledge income will also enhance the attractiveness of ETH as a “digital bond” and provide fundamental support for its valuation.
Ethereum’s long-term vision is even more ambitious, and the foundation has released its 10-year roadmap.The goal is to make Ethereum a scalable, quantum resistance and enterprise-level network, with the goal of Layer1 reaching 10,000 TPS and Layer 2 rollups reaching 1 million TPS.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently proposed EIP-7782,Plan to reduce the block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, which will effectively improve network throughput and transaction confirmation speed., these technological evolutions will provide solid support for Ethereum’s positioning as the “global programmable digital asset settlement layer”.
3. Deflationary economic model, scarcity creates value
Vitalik Buterin emphasized the “single-trough finalization” technology in the 2025 roadmap, compressing transaction confirmation time from 15 minutes to second level, while promoting “stateless Ethereum” to lower the node operation threshold and improve the degree of decentralization.
The core driving force for Ethereum to move towards $10,000 is not only due to technological upgrades, but also from its carefully designed deflationary economic model.
“UltraSound Money’s vision of ‘major deflation’ will eventually come.” Blockchain researcher Haotian wrote an article on the occasion of Ethereum’s tenth anniversary,“The economic model of EIP-1559’s combustion deflation mechanism and POS pledge income can be regarded as exquisite. The combustion mechanism + POS pledge income + Layer2 Fee feeds back. Once this combination punch is effectively operated, Ethereum will inevitably enter the ‘major deflation era’.”
Compared with Bitcoin’s limited value capture capabilities, the “long-term expectations” of the multi-layer earnings model superimposed on Ethereum are showing an overwhelming advantage.
The optimization of the validator economic model will further strengthen this trend. As the staking threshold is lowered and the yield rate is increased, more ETH will be locked in the staking contract.If the ETH staking rate increases from the current 25% to above 40%, the circulation supply will be significantly reduced.
Institutional investors have already seen this trend. A large proportion of ETH held by listed companies is used to pledge and obtain income.SharpLink almost used all its ETH positions for pledge, with annualized returns of about 3%-4%; Bit Digital had about 88% of ETH participated in verification at the end of the first quarter.
Strategic ETH Reserve data display,The total value of corporate ETH reserves exceeded US$10.5 billion, accounting for 2.26% of the total ETH supply. Bitmine Immersion Tech aims to lock in 5% of the total Ethereum supply (about 6 million).Form long-term deflation expectations.
Pledge not only provides stable returns, but also reduces market selling pressure and creates conditions for price increases. If the pledge of ETH spot ETF passes (the probability exceeds 70%), it will open a trillion-level traditional funds entrance.
The pledge income model makes ETH have the attributes of “digital bonds”, and the conservative valuation can be compared with the yield on US bonds:The annualized income reaches 6%, the corresponding price of the trillion-dollar market value is about US$8,300, and it requires the return to resonance with circulation deflation after exceeding US$10,000.
4. Institutional-level infrastructure, a bridge for the entry of traditional capital
Ethereum is about to move towards $10,000, which is inseparable from the large-scale entry of traditional institutional capital, and this process is accelerating.The institutional-level infrastructure built by listed companies is becoming a bridge for traditional capital to enter the Ethereum ecosystem.
Andrew Keys, co-founder and chairman of Ethermachine, said: “The additional allocation of ETH on the occasion of Ethereum’s tenth anniversary is a reflection of its long-term confidence in Ethereum as the underlying asset of the global decentralized economy.Bit Digital holds about 120,300 ETHs.When Jinyong Investment allocated tens of millions of dollars to invest in Ethereum, and when Ethermachine prepared to become the first Nasdaq listed company to reserve Ethereum, an enterprise-level asset allocation revolution had begun.
The perfect combination of technological breakthroughs and economic models is injecting unprecedented momentum into Ethereum.zkEVM integration will shorten the verification time to within 10 seconds. The RISC-V architecture may reduce Gas costs by 70%. The coordination between the main chain and the second-layer network is expected to integrate US$120 billion in liquidity and move towards the total locked value of US$200 billion.
1 at this moment970,000 ETHTen thousand ETH institutional holdings are just the prologue—When the balance sheet of listed companies completes migration from the “dollar standard” to the “ETH standard”, the trillion-dollar market value will become the starting point for the next generation of financial infrastructure.
