Sharplink Buys $62.4 Million in Ether After Eight-Month Pause

Sharplink has purchased a total of $62.4 million worth of Ether since Thursday, resuming accumulation after an eight-month pause. According to Cointelegraph, onchain data from Arkham shows the crypto treasury company bought 5,000 ETH on Thursday, followed by another 5,000 ETH on Friday worth $7.9 million, and then acquired 29,196 ETH worth $46.7 million across three over-the-counter transactions on Saturday. The three-day buying activity adds to indications that Sharplink has revived its active Ether accumulation strategy after previously being a close competitor to Bitmine as the world’s largest ETH treasury company. Sharplink declined to comment when first contacted on Thursday about the reason for the purchases or their timing. Sharplink’s renewed buying came during the same week it and Bitmine backed a new research and development nonprofit aimed at preparing Ethereum for institutional use. Sharplink said on Monday that the organization, Ethlabs, was formed to “ready Ethereum for the next phase of institutional adoption,” with support also coming from Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin and other Ethereum contributors. Sharplink said that as stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, funds, and autonomous AI commerce move on-chain, they are converging on Ethereum as a neutral and permissionless settlement layer, and that Ethlabs is intended to help ensure the network can meet demand at scale. The purchases also occurred as Ether was down 22.8% month-on-month and nearly 50% compared to the start of the year, a period in which Tether’s USDt (USDT) briefly surpassed Ether in market capitalization last week. Separately, US spot Ether ETFs recorded their seventh week of outflows last week, totaling $12.9 million in net outflows, driven mainly by withdrawals from BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA).