A fascinating new trend is emerging among struggling public companies: the pivot from traditional business models to becoming crypto treasury stocks. Taking a page from MicroStrategy’s (now called Strategy) playbook, these firms are repurposing their balance sheets by accumulating digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, often financed through equity issuance.
What makes this trend even more curious is the paradoxical use of massive share repurchase programs alongside aggressive equity raises for crypto accumulation: two strategies that typically run counter to each other.
We discussed crypto treasury companies on two back-to-back podcasts with Julian Klymochko and Andrew Walker in August.
In this article, we will explore this phenomenon in depth, with a particular spotlight on SharpLink Gaming Ltd. (SBET). Once a niche online betting solutions provider, SharpLink has seen its core revenues erode steadily since mid-2023. Facing financial headwinds, management embraced a radical pivot, recasting the company as a crypto treasury vehicle with Ethereum at its core. This transformation revived its battered stock. Recently, it also announced a $1.5 billion share buyback, representing approximately 42% of its market cap at announcement.
SharpLink Gaming Ltd. (SBET): $16.98
Market Cap: $3.14B
Key Insights
Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, SharpLink is among the largest publicly traded companies to adopt Ether (ETH) as its primary treasury reserve asset. This strategy positions the firm at the forefront of digital capital while giving investors direct exposure to Ethereum—the leading smart contract platform and second-largest digital asset. Since late May, SharpLink shares have experienced extreme volatility, climbing from $2.91 on May 20th to above $79 within a week, before ultimately settling back into the high-teens.
Bitcoin Vs Ethereum
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are the world’s two largest cryptocurrencies, but their roles and utility are very different. While BTC commands a significantly larger market capitalization, it is primarily viewed as “digital gold”, a store of value rather than a functional platform. By contrast, ETH-USD underpins a vast programmable blockchain ecosystem, powering decentralized applications (dApps), smart contracts, and a wide range of innovations. Ethereum serves as the foundational infrastructure for most stablecoins and many other digital assets, enabling them to function as intended and driving much of the real-world utility in the crypto economy.
Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, who is also BitMine’s (BMNR) Chairman, is quite optimistic about the future of Ethereum and states:
“We continue to believe Ethereum is one of the biggest macro trades over the next 10-15 years. Wall Street and AI moving onto the blockchain should lead to a greater transformation of today’s financial system. And the majority of this is taking place on Ethereum.”
I’ve often felt that the blockchain could be an excellent way to disrupt the title insurance business. The recent release of GDP data on Ethereum and eight other open blockchains brings unprecedented transparency and global accessibility, making economic statistics instantly verifiable and immune to tampering or manipulation. This highlights a new use case for crypto assets: serving as public, tamper-proof infrastructure for trusted information feeds, positioning Ethereum and similar networks as foundational platforms for both finance and official data distribution going forward.
Leadership Team at SharpLink
The key executives at SharpLink are highly experienced in digital assets, finance, and technology, positioning it strategically for its Ethereum-focused business model.
Joseph Chalom serves as the Co-CEO and was appointed on July 24, 2025. He is a former BlackRock Managing Director and Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships, with two decades of institutional finance and digital asset leadership. At BlackRock, he spearheaded the launch of landmark products such as the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), advanced tokenization through BUIDL, and forged key partnerships with Coinbase and Securitize.
Rob Phythian, SharpLink’s founder guided the company through its early growth, the 2024 domestication merger, and continues to shape its strategy as part of the Board’s Cryptocurrency & Technology and Investment Committees.
Robert M. DeLucia is the current CFO and a finance executive with forensic accounting expertise. At Adelphia, he led the five-year financial restatement and worked with the DOJ to produce fraud-tracing reports that ultimately secured executive convictions.
Source: SharpLink
Joseph Lubin was appointed Chairman on May 26, 2025. Co-founder of Ethereum and founder of ConsenSys, Lubin is a key figure in the global blockchain ecosystem. His appointment underscores SharpLink’s commitment to Ethereum as its core treasury asset rather than alternatives like Bitcoin or Solana.
With Chalom’s Wall Street pedigree, Phythian’s entrepreneurial roots, DeLucia’s financial discipline, and Lubin’s Ethereum legacy, SharpLink has assembled a leadership team uniquely positioned to bridge traditional finance and crypto-native innovation.
Funding new Ethereum
SharpLink raises capital through at-the-market (ATM) offerings and registered direct placements, converting the proceeds into ETH. This creates a compounding dynamic: as Ethereum appreciates, the value of SharpLink’s treasury rises, which in turn allows the company to issue new equity at higher valuations. Currently, there is approximately $6 billion in ATM capacity available, giving it considerable flexibility to expand its ETH holdings. In just the past week, the company secured $600 million through registered direct offerings with global institutional investors.
Source: SharpLink (Investor Presentation)
Unlike holding Ethereum through an ETF, where investors participate passively in price movements, SharpLink actively adds more ETH through ongoing equity raises and treasury accumulation. This means each share represents not only exposure to existing ETH but also a claim on the company’s expanding ETH reserves, creating incremental value for shareholders over time.
Skeptics could view this as a Ponzi scheme, while proponents could justify it as a powerful, self-reinforcing cycle designed to create exponential growth. There is a significant risk to the proponent’s argument because if Ethereum’s price were to fall, this same dynamic would work in reverse.
Share Buybacks as a NAV-Protection Tool
For many crypto treasury stocks, buybacks are less about signaling a low valuation and more about defending their net asset value (NAV) per share. For instance, while BitMine actively repurchased shares between August 2024 and February 2025, SharpLink has mostly taken the opposite route: diluting shareholders by issuing new equity to fund its aggressive Ethereum accumulation strategy.
However, SharpLink’s approach is designed with flexibility. If its stock price falls below the Ethereum NAV per share, management has planned to step in with repurchases. As Co-CEO Joseph Chalom explained:
“Should there exist periods where our stock trades at or below the net asset value of our ETH holdings, it would be dilutive on an ETH per share basis to issue new equity through our capital raising efforts. In this scenario, the accretive course of action may be to repurchase our common stock.”
This dual-track strategy enables SharpLink to pursue balance sheet growth through equity issuance while protecting the NAV per share through opportunistic buybacks, depending on market conditions.
The playbook resembles that of closed-end funds (CEFs), which often repurchase shares when they trade below NAV to close the discount gap. SharpLink is essentially using the same strategy, except its “assets” are primarily Ethereum.
As of August 2025, SharpLink holds ~797,704 ETH valued at around $3.7 billion, with nearly all of it staked to earn yields. These staking rewards (1,799 ETH to date) provide an additional funding stream for buybacks, allowing the company to support shareholder value. In effect, its repurchase program is partially crypto-backed, not just cash-backed.
SharpLink is currently trading at a discount to its Ethereum-backed net asset value (NAV) per share. Based on current holdings valued at $3.7 billion and approximately 169 million shares outstanding (as of August 14, 2025), the estimated NAV per share is $21.9. With the stock priced roughly 29% lower than this level, the market is discounting the company relative to its Ethereum assets. Such a gap increases the likelihood that management may initiate actual share repurchases in the near term. The company has no debt and its enterprise value is almost the same as its market cap.
Insider Trading Activity
Insider buying at scale, especially from top executives, often reflects management’s conviction in the company’s valuation and long-term strategy. Over the past six months, insiders have executed five open market trades in SharpLink, consisting of two purchases and three sales. Notably, SharpLink’s founder, Rob Phythian, purchased 44,640 shares for $299,980, while CFO Robert Michael DeLucia bought 7,440 shares for approximately $49,996 at an average price of $6.72 per share (pre-reverse split price).
Crypto Treasuries: How SharpLink Stacks Up Against Rivals
MicroStrategy (MSTR) remains the grandaddy of the crypto treasury holding companies, with its stock up nearly 180% over the last year. Under Michael Saylor, the company has aggressively expanded its Bitcoin position by issuing equity and convertible debt, growing its share count from 160.95 million in June 2023 to 306.76 million in June 2025. Unlike peers, MicroStrategy does not employ buybacks as a NAV-protection tool, instead betting entirely on long-term Bitcoin appreciation.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), chaired by Tom Lee of Fundstrat, has transitioned from a Bitcoin miner into the world’s largest Ethereum treasury company. It has recently shifted its interest from Bitcoin to Ethereum. Its ETH holdings now exceed 1.79 million ETH, more than double SharpLink’s ETH.
BitMine’s average purchase price of $3,643.75 for ETH provides a stronger profitability cushion compared to SharpLink’s much higher $4,648 average entry point. BitMine has also paired accumulation with shareholder-friendly capital allocation, launching a $1 billion buyback in July 2025 (28% of its market cap) and reducing its share count by 19% over the past year. The company has openly targeted ownership of 5% of all ETH in circulation, signaling its ambition to dominate the Ethereum treasury space.
SharpLink is the third-largest crypto treasury stock following MicroStrategy and BitMine.
Ethzilla Corp. (ETHZ) formerly 180 Life Sciences, recently rebranded and pivoted from a biotech company into a Ethereum treasury company. With 102,237 ETH (≈ $489 million) purchased at an average of $3,948.72, the company is scaling rapidly, albeit on a smaller base. Like SharpLink, ETHZilla has also used aggressive equity issuance but surprised the market with a $250 million buyback plan, equal to half its market cap at announcement, signaling its intent to defend shareholder value.
It will be worthwhile to watch whether these buyback announcements translate into meaningful repurchases.
Risks
All crypto treasury companies, including SharpLink, are exposed to the following risks, though their impact may vary by strategy, scale, and balance sheet strength:
Bottom Line
While it is too early to determine whether crypto-treasury models will prove sustainable in the long run, the upside potential is compelling for speculators, particularly if banking regulations evolve to formally integrate digital assets. In such a scenario, Ethereum’s role could expand dramatically, unlocking immense value across the ecosystem and directly benefiting ETH and ETH-backed treasury companies like SharpLink and Bitmine.
Since adopting its ETH treasury model, SharpLink has delivered returns more than double those of a spot ETH ETF, highlighting the power of its compounding approach.
The central question, however, remains: Whether Ethereum will become a foundational technology for a new digital financial era or fade as a passing trend?
Welcome to edition 105 of Buyback Wednesdays, a monthly series that tracks the top stock buyback announcements during the prior month. The companies in the list below are the ones that announced the most significant buybacks as a percentage of their market caps. They are not the largest buybacks in absolute dollar terms. A word of caution. Some of these companies could be low-volume small-cap or micro-cap stocks with a market cap below $2 billion.
As most companies announced their earnings this month, there has been a significant uptick in the number of companies announcing share buybacks, rising to 105 this month from 80 in the prior month.
Top 5 Stock Buyback Announcements
1. ETHZilla Corporation (ETHZ): $2.67
On August 25, 2025, the Board of Directors of this gaming, entertainment cum crypto treasury company announced that it had approved a new $250 million stock repurchase agreement, equal to around 53% of its market cap at announcement.
| Market Cap: $465.00M | Avg. Daily Volume (30 days): 11,072,055 | Revenue (TTM): N/A |
| Net Income Margin (TTM): N/A | ROE (TTM): -141.24% | Net Cash: $0.81M |
| P/E: N/A | Forward P/E: N/A | EV/EBITDA (TTM): -68.39 |
2. SharpLink Gaming Ltd. (SBET): $16.98
On August 22, 2025, the Board of Directors of this online technology and crypto treasury company announced that it had approved a new $1.5 billion share repurchase program, equal to around 42.5% of its market cap at announcement.
| Market Cap: $3.14B | Avg. Daily Volume (30 days):37,941,803 | Revenue (TTM): $3.14M |
| Net Income Margin (TTM): N/A | ROE (TTM): -46.60% | Net Cash: $5.07M |
| P/E: N/A | Forward P/E: N/A | EV/EBITDA (TTM): -140.47 |
3. EnerSys (ENS): $102.25
On August 6, 2025, the Board of Directors of this stored energy solutions provider announced that it had approved an additional $1 billion share repurchase agreement. This represents around 28% of its market cap at announcement.
| Market Cap: $3.85B | Avg. Daily Volume (30 days):404,922 | Revenue (TTM): $3.66B |
| Net Income Margin (TTM): 9.60% | ROE (TTM): 19.09% | Net Debt: $1.04B |
| P/E: 11.71 | Forward P/E: 12.61 | EV/EBITDA (TTM): 8.29 |
4. ZipRecruiter (ZIP): $5.06
On August 8, 2025, the Board of Directors of this online employment platform authorized an additional $100 million share repurchase program, equal to around 27% of its market cap at announcement.
| Market Cap: $435.59M | Avg. Daily Volume (30 days):1,163,049 | Revenue (TTM): $450.40M |
| Net Income Margin (TTM): -7.93% | ROE (TTM): N/A | Net Debt: $137M |
| P/E: -13.16 | Forward P/E: -9.26 | EV/EBITDA (TTM): -26.06 |
5. Tidewater Inc. (TDW): $58.75
On August 4, 2025, the Board of Directors of this marine services provider authorized a new $500 million share repurchase program, equal to around 21% of its market cap at announcement.
| Market Cap: $2.98B | Avg. Daily Volume (30 days):929,676 | Revenue (TTM): $1.36B |
| Net Income Margin (TTM): 14.62% | ROE (TTM): 17.84% | Net Debt: $255.84M |
| P/E: 15.74 | Forward P/E: 15.16 | EV/EBITDA (TTM): 7.06 |
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