SharpLink Co-CEO: Holding Without Selling, Ensuring ETH Continues to Generate Revenue in Bear Market

Author: Qin Xiaofeng, Senior Writer at Odaily

Original text by: Tony Edward

Compiled by: Odaily Planet Daily, Qin Xiaofeng

Editor’s Note: At the recent Injective Summit 2026 in Washington, SharpLink Co-CEO Joseph Chalom gave an exclusive interview.

He stated that the current market sentiment towards Ethereum is pessimistic, but there is a divergence between reality and market sentiment. In fact, multiple data points from the Ethereum ecosystem indicate a bright future: stablecoin trading volume exceeds 50%, tokenized RWA is nearly 60%, and DeFi's dominance remains unshaken. He remarked, "Ethereum is winning, but communication has broken down." SharpLink has partnered with giants like ConsenSys to invest in the three core teams spun off from the Ethereum Foundation, focusing on institutional scaling, privacy compliance, and market promotion. More critically, they are maintaining zero leverage and no debt during the bear market, insisting on making ETH "productive" and predicting that tokenization and 24/7 trading will ignite the next wave of institutional rush.

This week, ETH briefly approached $2000, and the ETH/BTC exchange rate reached 0.03, marking a nearly three-month high, seemingly indicating that things are improving. Additionally, after about eight months without large-scale purchases, SharpLink bought 10,000 ETH again in June this year at an average cost of approximately $1611; their total ETH holdings reached 886,725 ETH after the purchase.

Below is the original dialogue from the interview, Enjoy~

Host (Tony Edward/Thinking Crypto): Everyone, we are recording at the Injective Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., and today I am joined by SharpLink's CEO Joseph Chalom. Joseph, it’s great to see you.

Joseph Chalom: It’s great to talk to you again. First, let me introduce ourselves; we are a digital asset fund management company. We have raised billions of dollars to purchase Ethereum (ETH) and make it very efficient. The two most interesting things in the past month are: first, we returned to the public market for equity financing and actually bought back ETH at a very good price and repurchased some shares. Second, we have started to support and invest in the spin-off projects within the Ethereum ecosystem alongside Joe Lubin from ConsenSys and Tom Lee from Bitmine, which will be very positive for the new narrative and new era of Ethereum.

Host: There has been a lot of negative sentiment surrounding ETH recently, including some doubts about the Ethereum Foundation. Do you think this negative sentiment is just a symptom of the bear market?

Joseph Chalom: In fact, I believe that over the past year and a half, there has been a divergence between reality and market sentiment.

The reality is, let’s start from a very positive side. The Ethereum ecosystem accounts for over 50% of all stablecoin trading volume and nearly 60% of tokenized real-world assets, with the vast majority of DeFi built on Ethereum. So if we look at the report card, they are winning. The sentiment is quite negative largely due to the industry slump and the Ethereum Foundation—despite having done exceptionally well over the past decade—making the decision to streamline and allow more ecosystem participants to support the roadmap. This mode of communication has led to a lack of clarity and confidence within the ecosystem, even though it is actually winning.

Therefore, some of us, as guardians of the ecosystem and large holders of ETH, have stepped up, and we are taking action to support our position. I’m happy to share some of the things we have done collectively as an industry.

Host: Let’s dive deeper; what specific measures have been taken?

Joseph Chalom: Let’s start with the positive side. Ethereum is the longest-running blockchain after Bitcoin, has never gone down, and is the most secure, trusted, and liquid. It also has a multi-year, very aggressive scaling roadmap.

Today, their mission and policy is to return to the fundamentals. The Ethereum Foundation will focus on privacy and censorship resistance and some core principles to ensure Ethereum maintains its trusted neutrality for decades to come. But this means that some of the most critical talents and functions within the foundation have been spun off. In the past three weeks or so, three teams have spun off from the Ethereum Foundation and received support from Joe Lubin, myself, and Tom Lee from Bitmine. These are actually very important for institutional adoption.

Let me tell you who they are. The first is ETH Labs, which consists of some of the strongest developers in the Ethereum ecosystem, building the scaling capabilities needed for institutions. The second is Ethereum Institutional, which is the market-facing front end and business development activities of Ethereum, spun off from the foundation with our support. Just earlier this week, the three of us also funded EthSystems, which is building next-generation privacy and compliance capabilities on Ethereum, which is absolutely necessary for the largest institutions to trade and ensure their data privacy. While it sounds like three independent nodes in the ecosystem, these are the three most important things driving institutional adoption in the coming year and beyond.

Host: That’s interesting. I see many institutions starting with Ethereum when preparing for tokenization and delving into DeFi, and then they eventually expand to other chains.

Joseph Chalom: Indeed. As I mentioned earlier, Ethereum possesses the characteristics that institutions need. I worked at BlackRock for 20 years, and I know that before you want to migrate a financial track record that has existed for 40, 50, or 60 years, you would want to migrate to a trusted, never-failing, secure, and highly liquid system. Most importantly, people don’t talk enough about decentralization.

A truly decentralized blockchain means that once you make a decision, the rules cannot be changed. Therefore, having a fully distributed decentralized chain, with no single person or single treasury controlling it, is very important for institutions as they are making an infrastructure migration that happens once in a generation.

Host: I completely agree. So how is SharpLink creating value for shareholders during the bear market? Is it through staking DeFi protocols to generate passive income?

Joseph Chalom: Absolutely. During the digital asset fund management boom last summer, there were about six or seven Ethereum digital asset fund management companies, and possibly five Solana fund management companies that launched. Only a few of us were able to raise billions of dollars and achieve a scalable launch speed. In this competitive industry, you need scale.

What we did was, first, use all this capital to buy ETH and then make it generate returns from day one, because ETH itself is a productive asset. You can stake it and earn 2.5% to 3% returns. We have been doing this and making it more efficient than this benchmark. We also participated in DeFi. We announced a partnership with another public company, Galaxy, to establish a $125 million fund to deploy our ETH into new protocols, helping them launch and achieve what is called TVL (Total Value Locked) or initial capital. So, we are making ETH's output higher than native staking.

Finally, I want to say that when you encounter integration periods, winters, and cycles just three months after starting a business, you can truly see who is operating a listed company in an institutional manner. We have no debt, no preferred shares, and we have not used our ETH as collateral for loans. We decided to be conservative during the winter. A few of us have survived, holding ETH worth billions of dollars. This is how we protect our investors.

Honestly, going through a winter is not fun, but respecting and treating investors well has always been our motivation. You know, after winter comes spring and summer. When the market recovers, we are in a very good position. And we are starting to see the recovery of ETH. Since these recent announcements, ETH has risen about 20% from its lows. The short-term situation is indeed challenging, but the long-term adoption narrative has never been so optimistic.

Host: It’s great to hear that. I love that you haven’t taken on debt because I think that’s risky and somewhat goes against the spirit of cryptocurrency.

Joseph Chalom: Yes. You know, I admire Michael Saylor; he has indeed invented a new asset exposure tool. You can own a public company to gain exposure to Bitcoin.

The challenge in the Bitcoin space is that it is not productive in itself. To keep your Bitcoin accumulating and generating returns, the only way is to financialize your stock, issue convertible bonds, and preferred shares. Then you might find yourself in trouble and ultimately have to sell your reserve assets. This has always been a challenge for the Bitcoin community because digital asset fund management companies, including Michael Saylor, have shifted from being net buyers of Bitcoin to sellers now, which is very unfavorable for short-term price movements.

Host: Absolutely right. Joseph, with your background at BlackRock and in traditional finance, you have rich experience. What do you think about the prospects for institutional adoption of this technology? It seems like everyone on Wall Street is seeking tokenization and getting involved in stablecoins and DeFi.

Joseph Chalom: Yes, I think the field of tokenization, whether it’s tokenizing dollars into stablecoins or tokenizing government bonds or real-world assets, has been a phenomenon for about 8 to 9 years.

So far, progress has actually been quite slow, due to a lack of regulatory clarity. I want to describe in very simple terms how these things work together and how they stack.

You can think of stablecoins as the dollar or value layer of future finance, and you can think of tokenized assets as the asset exposure layer, while DeFi is the execution layer. If you have a currency layer, an exposure layer, and an execution layer, you can start running. What you are beginning to see is not only the tokenization of new funds but also the tokenization of existing multi-billion dollar funds and stocks. A bit more complex, there’s another layer where you have cash, assets, and execution layers. Agentic (intelligent agents) will be the automation layer.

I believe we are still in the second half of the first game. We are waiting for more regulatory clarity, but institutions have moved from the learning phase to the experimentation phase and are now entering the production phase; it’s a race not to fall behind.

Host: Do you think once the Clarity Act is passed, it will provide a catalyst or confidence for institutions to innovate and invest more?

Joseph Chalom: 100% agree. I think the Clarity Act is very important in two ways. First, it clarifies that if you are a DeFi developer, you are a software provider, and you are not responsible for the actions that occur on your software, but if you hold customer assets as a DeFi protocol, then you are subject to regulation and responsible for everything that happens. So the future of DeFi will be brighter because of the Clarity Act.

The second point is, I believe it will also affect market sentiment and momentum. In the cryptocurrency space, even a little tailwind can lead to massive development.

The third point is, if you are in a large institution and your leadership is interested in digital assets, then with the government’s "good governance" stamp of approval, you will have more leeway to do things that would otherwise be done slowly at a faster pace. I believe we will see a lot of momentum this summer. And I think we will reach a point where tokenization will become the norm rather than the exception.

Host: Do you think there will be significant challenges when some companies tokenize while traditional markets still exist? For example, you could have a tokenized version of Tesla stock, but traditional stocks are still available in the stock market. What differences do you think there will be, and what issues might arise?

Joseph Chalom: I think the biggest challenge is the existence of different liquidity pools.** For tokenization to succeed, we need to ensure that the digital version of the stock or fund has trading volumes and liquidity comparable to the traditional version. But whenever there are technological advancements, there will be coexistence of analog and digital. Just like slow trains and high-speed trains running on parallel tracks, eventually they will all become high-speed.

But I think the more important inflection point is this: imagine a world where your government announces a war in the Middle East on a Friday night, and suppose you hold a simulated version of a stock in your portfolio and want to sell it. If you hold the digital version, you can trade 24/7 and express your views. You want to go long on an oil company, you can. You want to sell consumer cyclical stocks, you can.

At some point, those trustees deciding whether to purchase the simulated version or the digital on-chain version will almost certainly choose to buy and hold the on-chain version because it can be traded 24/7, is programmable, and can settle instantly. So the trustees will reach a point where they say to themselves: I cannot hold the slow simulated version because I cannot express my views over the weekend. So at some point, there will be a tipping point, and I think it will take a few more years.

Host: That’s a great point. As the market moves towards 24/7 trading, if you are still using the simulated version, you are almost at a disadvantage. You must shift to the tokenized digital version.

Joseph Chalom: Yes. But you need liquidity to tilt towards the version that favors liquidity, as that is also important.

Host: I think that’s why exchanges, large institutions, and banks are all moving towards a 24/7 market; it makes sense.

Joseph Chalom: Yes. Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are transitioning to trading 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just this week, the DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation)—the clearing and settlement institution that handles about $400 trillion in transactions annually—has just launched on-chain collateral tokenization. So, I find this very exciting. You can see those announcements becoming so commonplace every day, whereas three or four years ago, they were enough to shake the market. That’s when you know the momentum is here.

Host: Absolutely right. It feels like this asset class is maturing. We are entering a new phase of adoption. That’s incredible. Lastly, can you share your roadmap?

Joseph Chalom: I think the most important thing SharpLink is doing right now, besides accumulating ETH and making it generate returns (we have always been the digital asset fund management company with the highest ETH production capacity), is stepping up to do some things we never anticipated needing to do, which is to become guardians of the ecosystem. Not just in words, but by putting capital into new capabilities, investing in the spin-off projects of the Ethereum Foundation, and basically helping Ethereum go to market.

I am often asked: whose interests does this serve? The answer is, it serves the interests of our shareholders and is completely aligned. So, we want to help Ethereum win, whether it’s Layer 1 or Layer 2, and tell the story of why the ETH token will become a highly demanded settlement and trust commodity, which actually aligns with the interests of our investors. Therefore, we will invest alongside our ecosystem partners and strive to be very good guardians. What we will not do is participate in the core protocol; that is completely decentralized. We will not participate in the governance of Ethereum, but we will participate in funding talent and funding marketing capabilities, which aligns with the long-term interests of our investors.

(End)

This content is provided for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Any events, rewards, online promotions, or related information mentioned herein should not be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or invitation to purchase, sell, trade, or otherwise deal in any crypto assets. Crypto assets are highly volatile and may result in loss. The availability of WEEX services, products, and related events may vary by region. You are responsible for ensuring that your participation is in accordance with applicable local laws and regulations.