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According to the latest data from BitcoinTreasuries, the total amount of Bitcoin (BTC) held by public firms recently surpassed the one million mark, underscoring the rapid pace of adoption of the digital asset worldwide.

Bitcoin Adoption Shows No Signs Of Slowing

While corporate adoption of Bitcoin is not a novel practice, the trend gained significant momentum following US President Donald Trump’s victory in the November 2024 elections. Since then, several firms have unveiled BTC corporate treasury strategies.

Michael Saylor-led Strategy – formerly MicroStrategy – continues to be the undisputed leader of the trend, having some 636,000 BTC on its balance sheet at the time of writing. However, other companies like Metaplanet, Semler Scientific, and MARA Holdings have been busy increasing their BTC exposure over the past ten months.

Commenting on the development, BitcoinTreasuries President Pete Rizzo said that despite the total amount of BTC crossing one million, multiple indicators still show that institutional adoption of the digital asset is still in its infancy.

Rizzo referred to the fact that most companies have only recently started to accumulate BTC for the long haul. As a result, a major chunk of the capital raised by such firms remains yet to be deployed for BTC purchases.

Bradley Duke, Head of Europe at Bitwise, commented on the milestone saying that the total value of BTC locked in corporate treasuries is now worth more than $111 billion. He added:

The structural imbalance between BTC supply and demand is real and getting more pronounced.

Data from BitcoinTreasuries shows that currently, more than 100 companies hold BTC on their balance sheets. However, if recent developments are to go by, the corporate adoption of digital assets does not seem to be limited to BTC.

Recently, a number of companies have announced plans to adopt Ethereum (ETH) as part of their corporate treasury strategy. While ETH does not have a hard supply cap of 21 million like BTC, it does offer multiple use-cases and the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism which helps in reducing the active circulating supply of ETH.

Will Companies Pivot To ETH?

At present, BTC commands a total market cap of over $2 trillion, compared to Ethereum’s $518 billion market cap. Although there’s still a difference of almost $1.5 trillion, ETH is quickly closing in the gap.

For instance, asset manager VanEck CEO, Jan van Eck, recently called ETH the “Wall Street token,” saying that Ethereum’s role in facilitating stablecoin transactions will likely help it give strong competition to BTC.

Recent exchange-traded funds (ETF) data also supports the quiet institutional rotation from BTC to ETH, as ETH ETFs saw almost $4 billion in inflows during August 2025. At press time, BTC trades at $109,403, down 2.2% in the past 24 hours.

Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from and TradingView.com

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Ethereum advocacy firm Etherealize has closed a $40 million funding round to help it pitch the blockchain to Wall Street in a week that’s already seen public firms add over $1.2 billion worth of Ether to their treasuries. 

Etherealize said on Wednesday that the crypto-focused venture firms Electric Capital and Paradigm led the round, which it would use to “continue driving institutional adoption of Ethereum.”

The company launched in January with funding from the Ethereum Foundation and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to educate institutions on the blockchain and the Ether (ETH) token.

Wall Street has yet to embrace ETH as deeply as it has Bitcoin (BTC) when comparing the trading volumes and inflows to related exchange-traded funds.

Etherealize co-founder Grant Hummer said in January that amid the ETF launches, he noticed institutions lacked education on ETH, which the company wanted to address.

Etherealize to use funds for institutional tools 

Etherealize said the $40 million would be put toward developing crypto-based financial tools aimed at institutions.

The firm wants to build infrastructure for privately trading and settling tokenized assets, a settlement platform geared to “institutional tokenization workflows,” and applications aimed at markets for tokenized fixed income products, such as tokenized bonds.

“Over the past decade, Ethereum has gone from an experiment to the world’s most battle-tested, open financial network,” said Etherealize co-founder Danny Ryan, adding the raise would help upgrade “institutional finance to modern, safer, globally accessible rails.”

Public firms add $1.26 billion worth of ETH this week

Etherealize’s raise comes after public firms globally have added $1.2 billion worth of ETH to their holdings so far this week, according to data from the website Strategic ETH Reserve.

The Ether Machine, a so-called crypto treasury company that is planning to go public soon, made the week’s largest addition with a 150,000 ETH raise on Tuesday, valued at $654 million.

The same day, the largest ETH holding firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, said it scooped up over 150,000 ETH over the previous week, with data from Arkham showing it bought an additional $65 million worth on Wednesday.

Related: Ether exchange reserves fall to 3-year low as ETFs, corporate treasuries soak up supply 

Sharplink Gaming and the Hong Kong-listed Yunfeng Financial announced they bought more ETH on Tuesday, making respective purchases worth $176 million and $44 million.

ETH at nearly 50% odds of $6,000 this year 

Nick Forster, the founder of crypto options platform Derive, said in a note on Wednesday that a possible Federal Reserve rate cut this month and the ETH buys by public companies have set it up “for explosive potential heading into Q4.”

He said ETH-buying firms now hold nearly 4% of the token supply, and a rate cut could see such companies “holding 6-10% of ETH’s supply by year-end, positioning them as a major force behind ETH’s price action.”

Forster predicted there was a 44% chance that ETH reaches $6,000 by the end of the year, and gave 30% odds of it hitting that price by the end of October.

Ether is currently trading for just under $4,400, up 1.8% on the day, but it has fallen 11.5% since its peak of around $4,950 on Aug. 24.

Trade Secrets: Ether could ‘rip like 2021’ as SOL traders brace for 10% drop 

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/etherealize-raises-40m-to-market-ethereum-firms-add-1-2b-this-week/feed/ 0 56683 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/asia-morning-briefing-hex-trust-ceo-sees-both-promise-and-peril-in-bitcoin-treasury-firms/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/asia-morning-briefing-hex-trust-ceo-sees-both-promise-and-peril-in-bitcoin-treasury-firms/#respond Tue, 02 Sep 2025 03:00:46 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/asia-morning-briefing-hex-trust-ceo-sees-both-promise-and-peril-in-bitcoin-treasury-firms/

The trend of companies establishing crypto treasuries is gaining momentum, with Sharps Technology—a small player in the medical device and pharmaceutical sector—being the last to announce a plan to raise $400 million through a stock sale aimed at funding Solana (SOL) treasury.

New Solana Treasury In The Makings

The capital raise, which is set to close on August 28, will effectively transform Sharps’ stock into a proxy for the Solana price, attracting backing from crypto investment firms such as ParaFi, Pantera Capital, and CoinFund. 

This infusion of over $400 million positions Sharps to potentially become the largest holder of Solana among publicly traded companies, surpassing its nearest competitor, Upexi, which holds approximately $394 million in the cryptocurrency.

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To further strengthen its position in the crypto ecosystem, Sharps has appointed Alice Zhang, a venture capitalist and co-founder of the crypto smartphone maker Jambo, to its board as the new chief investment officer. James Zhang, another co-founder from Jambo, will serve as a strategic advisor. 

Alice Zhang expressed confidence in the new team’s capabilities, stating, “We will have a team with deep ties to the Solana ecosystem and proven founder-level experience in scaling institutional digital asset platforms.”

However, Sharps’ frontrunner status in the Solana treasury market may be short-lived. Fortune reports that major crypto players, including Galaxy Digital, Multicoin Capital, and Jump Crypto, are in the process of raising $1 billion to launch their own Solana treasury company. 

Strategy Expands Bitcoin Holdings

This investment into Sharps is part of a larger trend where small public companies are actively establishing digital asset treasuries, which are essentially pools of cryptocurrency held on their balance sheets. 

This trend extends to the market’s largest altcoins, including XRP, Binance Coin (BNB), and The Open Network’s (TON) native token. This strategy has taken even higher relevance under the US’s leadership in creating a supportive framework for digital assets in the country.

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In tandem with these developments, Strategy (previously MicroStrategy), the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin (BTC), announced on Monday that it had acquired additional tokens, taking advantage of the current retrace. 

Between August 18 and August 24, the Bitcoin proxy firm disclosed it purchased 3,081 Bitcoin for approximately $356.9 million, averaging around $115,829 per token.

Michael Saylor, the driving force behind Strategy’s crypto investments, revealed that the firm has achieved a Bitcoin yield of 25.4% year-to-date as of August 24, 2025. With 632,457 Bitcoins acquired for roughly $46.50 billion.

As of this writing, Solana lost the $200 level in line with the broader market correction that led the cryptocurrency to retrace nearly 5% in the 24-hour time frame. It now trades at $196, meaning a 32% gap from its $293 record high. 

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned multiple companies and individuals accused of using stablecoins to help Russia skirt international sanctions tied to its war in Ukraine on Aug. 14.

The designations target both Russian-linked businesses and foreign intermediaries alleged to have facilitated large-scale cross-border transactions for sanctioned entities.

The move highlights OFAC’s growing focus on stablecoins, which regulators say have become a preferred tool for sanctions evasion due to their speed, global reach, and relatively low transaction costs compared to traditional banking.

High volume ruble-backed transfers

A7 LLC, the creator of the ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin, was singled out for its reported role in transferring about $1 billion daily, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.

A7 and its subsidiaries, A71 and A7 Agent, are majority-owned by Ilan Shor, who was convicted in 2017 for his role in the theft of $1 billion from three Moldovan banks, and Russian state-owned Promsvyazbank (PSB), which is a sanctioned entity due to its role in financing Russia’s defense sector.

Both Shor and PSB have been accused of undermining democratic processes abroad, including alleged vote-buying in Moldova’s 2024 elections.

Old Vector LLC, based in Kyrgyzstan, serves as the issuer of the A7A5 token. While Kyrgyzstan maintains a permissive regulatory framework for crypto issuers, U.S. officials allege the company’s activities were integral to Russia’s sanctions evasion network.

Platforms linked to sanctioned entities

The Treasury also targeted entities tied to Sergey Mendeleev, co-founder of the sanctioned Garantex crypto exchange, which was used to move illicit funds, including via Tether’s stablecoin USDT.

Garantex was dismantled with assistance from the U.S. Secret Service, which froze $26 million in USDT with Tether’s help.

Mendeleev is also behind the “Cryptorouble” (RUBT) stablecoin and Exved, a cross-border payments platform designed for Russian exporters and importers operating under sanctions pressure.

Exved reportedly uses USDT to obscure Russian business ties in transactions worth tens of billions of rubles each month. Technical services to Exved are provided by Indefi Smartbank, backed by Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

Kyrgyzstan-based Grinex, described by Elliptic as Garantex’s successor, was also sanctioned for facilitating trades in A7A5 and USDT.

The action reflects OFAC’s increasing scrutiny of cryptocurrency in sanctions enforcement. In recent years, the agency has expanded its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list to include a growing number of digital asset addresses, enabling exchanges, payment processors, and financial institutions to block transactions linked to sanctioned actors.

Elliptic said it has updated its blockchain monitoring tools so clients can detect and block any transactions tied to the sanctioned wallets and entities. Regulators have signaled they will continue targeting stablecoin-based systems that bypass the traditional financial sector, viewing them as a growing threat to sanctions compliance.

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