SharpLink And The Rise Of Crypto Treasury Companies

A quiet but profound trend is emerging in public markets: companies like SharpLink (NASDAQ:SBET), MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR), Strider, and a growing list of others are no longer just operating businesses — they are becoming de facto crypto treasuries.

At first glance they look like competitors. In reality they have almost none. Their real purpose is not to out-compete each other, but to accumulate large reserves of Ethereum, lock them into staking and restaking protocols, and generate high-yield passive income while simultaneously laying the foundation for an entirely new corporate finance stack.

From Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake

Bitcoin is still mined via energy-intensive Proof-of-Work. Ethereum, Solana, TON and most major layer-1s have migrated to Proof-of-Stake. Instead of miners burning electricity, token holders now lock up coins to secure the network and earn newly minted tokens as reward. This shift turned staking into the primary "mining" mechanism for the majority of non-Bitcoin market cap.

Traditional staking is simple: lock ETH – validate blocks – earn on average ~3–5 % annual yield.
Restaking (via protocols like EigenLayer) takes it further. The same locked ETH is reused to secure additional networks and services, pushing effective yields into the 8–15 %+ range with liquid staking derivatives that remain tradable.

The Rise of On-Chain Corporate Treasuries

What SharpLink and a handful of similar companies are quietly building is nothing less than a new kind of corporate treasury-one that lives entirely on the blockchain.

On October 28, SharpLink announced it would deploy another $200 million into restaking protocols. The mechanics are elegantly simple. The company raises U.S. dollars through equity issuances or convertible debt, converts those dollars into Ethereum, and immediately locks the tokens into staking and restaking layers such as EigenLayer. While traditional Ethereum staking typically yields in the ~3–5% annual range, restaking and more advanced strategies can increase returns — though these enhanced yields come with materially higher smart-contract and slashing risks, and are not guaranteed. Public data from leading liquid staking protocols (e.g., Lido, RocketPool) show base staking yields generally fluctuating between 3–5%, while early restaking incentives on EigenLayer have at times raised effective returns into the high single digits or low double digits depending on reward programs.

Instead of presenting these yields as fixed or broadly achievable, they should be understood as variable, program-dependent, and subject to significant risk, particularly for strategies that pursue double-digit performance.

Into 2026, JPMorgan, BlackRock, and other traditional giants may likely explore acceptance of liquid staking tokens like stETH alongside BTC/ETH as high-grade collateral for conventional lending. If this happens, corporations will likely generate double-digit risk-adjusted returns on their balance sheet without ever sacrificing access to the underlying assets.

Why the Model Is Spreading So Rapidly

The economics appear compelling. Capital that costs 3-4 % to raise-whether through equity or cheap convertible notes-can now be deployed into protocols that pay higher returns with virtually no duration risk. A Swiss-domiciled treasury company, for example, could soon borrow in Swiss francs at 3-4 % while earning higher than these rates on the Ethereum securing those bonds, instantly becoming the lowest-cost issuer in the country.

At the same time, every new corporate treasury that stakes its holdings increases the effective "fixed supply" of the asset, steadily reducing realized volatility over time. The more ETH corporations lock on their balance sheets and productively reuse, the more the network resembles a giant, decentralized, high-yielding reserve currency – an asset traditional finance is only now starting to accept as legitimate collateral.

In short, these companies are not competing with one another. They are collectively constructing the rails of tomorrow's corporate finance system, one staked token at a time.

SharpLink Today

SharpLink is one of the purest plays: its primary revenue stream is now staking and restaking rewards on its Ethereum holdings. It reported over$100 million in net income for its third quarter largely from these activities. No traditional competitors exist because the game is not about beating someone else – it is about accumulating as much staked ETH as possible before institutional grade rails (JPMorgan collateral, tokenized bond issuance, etc.) go fully live.

The Bigger Picture

We are standing at the very beginning of a parallel corporate finance system that is being built in plain sight.

10-15 years from now – and quite possibly much sooner – holding Bitcoin or staked Ethereum on a public company's balance sheet will feel as routine and uncontroversial as holding U.S. dollars or short-term Treasuries does today.

The handful of companies that are aggressively accumulating these reserves right now – SharpLink among them – are not merely speculating on price appreciation. They are positioning themselves as the foundational infrastructure providers of the next financial era: the moment when corporate balance sheets migrate en masse onto the blockchain.

For equity investors who can tolerate the inevitable volatility along the way, this represents one of the most asymmetric structural opportunities in modern finance.

*Disclosure: Cryptocurrency investments remain highly volatile and are unregulated in many jurisdictions. Always conduct your own research and invest only what you can afford to lose.

Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.