Would you have $10,000 worth of Ethereum?

Author: Martin

Global listed companies are hoarding Ethereum at an unprecedented rate. From technology giants to traditional enterprises, a silent battle for digital assets has begun.

As of August 5, 2025, 59 physical companies have included Ethereum in their balance sheets. The total holdings of the top ten listed companies have exceeded 1.97 million ETH, with a total value of US$7.1 billion (approximately RMB 50.5 billion), a month-on-month increase of 121.8%.

"We have increased our holdings by another 15,822 ETH, bringing our strategic reserves to 430,000." On August 3, the listed company Sharplink Gaming calmly announced the news in a statement. The total value of its Ethereum holdings has exceeded US$1.6 billion.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost simultaneously, Jinyong Investment announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that it had approved a budget of US$10 million specifically for developing Web 3.0 businesses and investing in virtual assets such as Ethereum. Institutional investors are no longer content with theoretical discussions; they are now putting real money into adding Ethereum to their corporate balance sheets. First, listed companies are rushing to buy Ethereum, accelerating their strategic reserve accumulation. In 2025, a race for enterprise-level asset allocation focused on Ethereum quietly began. Unlike individual investors, the sheer scale and resolve of listed companies purchasing Ethereum is rewriting the rules of the game in the cryptocurrency market.

Within 24 hours after Trump signed the Genius Act,Ethereum soared 8% to break through $3,600. The bill established a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins for the first time, and 90% of stablecoins and RWAs (real-world assets) are deployed on Ethereum,

In this competition, several US-listed companies have become leaders. As of August 2025, Bitmine Immersion Tech holds approximately 833,100 ETH (statistics vary slightly between sources), valued at approximately $3.006 billion, making it the publicly listed company with the largest known holdings of Ethereum. Following closely behind is SharpLink Gaming, with 438,200 ETH valued at $1.6 billion; Bit Digital holds approximately 120,300 ETH; and BTCS Inc. also holds 70,000 ETH. Together, these companies represent the "micro-strategy" trend of Ethereum in the U.S. stock market. On July 30th, to celebrate Ethereum's tenth anniversary, Ethermachine, an institutional Ethereum reserve platform, announced it had purchased nearly 15,000 ETH at a price of $3,809 per ETH, for a total of approximately $56 million. This increase brought its total Ethereum holdings to 334,757, making it the third-largest holder of Ethereum among companies outside of MicroStrategy. These companies aren't just improvisations. SharpLink Gaming's chairman, Joseph Lubin, is a co-founder of Ethereum, and Bitmine's strategic transformation was led by Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee. These companies are deeply versed in the blockchain industry, and their strategic deployments signal a fundamental shift in Ethereum's role in corporate asset allocation.

II. Technology Roadmap: The Engine of Ethereum's Value Explosion

Behind the frenzied hoarding of listed companies lies a firm confidence in the technological evolution and long-term value of Ethereum.

Over the next two years, Ethereum will undergo a series of major technological upgrades.

These breakthroughs have the potential to fundamentally transform its application scenarios and economic model.

The integration of zkEVM into the mainnet is scheduled for deployment between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026.

This upgrade will enable 99% of blocks to be verified within 10 seconds and significantly reduce the cost of zero-knowledge proof verification by 80%.

Technological breakthroughs bring real value. The integration of zkEVM could further expand the market share of mainstream stablecoins on the Ethereum mainchain, increase daily gas consumption, strengthen ETH's deflationary mechanism, provide compliance and privacy protections for traditional financial institutions, and activate large-scale institutional DeFi application scenarios. Research and development of the RISC-V execution architecture is expected to begin in the second half of 2025. This change will increase smart contract execution efficiency by 3-5 times and reduce gas costs by 50-70%. Ethereum hosts over 80% of global DeFi protocols and stablecoin transactions, and daily gas consumption drives ETH deflation. This leap in execution performance may spawn entirely new application scenarios: high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI reasoning, micropayments, and other applications that were previously difficult to achieve on Ethereum will become possible. The main chain and second-layer network ecological synergy plan is launched in the fourth quarter of 2025. The goal is to achieve seamless interoperability between the main chain and major second-layer networks, integrating the current approximately US$120 billion in decentralized liquidity and bringing the total locked value (TVL) to over US$200 billion. This synergy will significantly improve the capital efficiency and user experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate liquidity across the entire ecosystem, generating significant network effects.

The optimization of the validator economic model will begin in the second half of 2025.The core is to gradually lower the minimum staking threshold for validators, from 32ETH to 1ETH, and at the same time increase the annualized staking rate of return from the current 4-6% to 6-8%. These changes could push the ETH staking ratio from the current approximately 25% to over 40%, further reducing the circulating supply of ETH and reinforcing deflationary expectations. If the staking ratio rises from 25% to 40%, 48 million ETH will be locked up, further exacerbating circulation deflation. Increased staking returns will also enhance ETH's attractiveness as a "digital bond," providing fundamental support for its valuation. Ethereum's long-term vision is even more ambitious. The Foundation has published a 10-year roadmap, with the goal of making Ethereum a scalable, quantum-resistant, and enterprise-grade network, with the goal of achieving 10,000 TPS on Layer 1 and 1 million TPS on Layer 2 rollups.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently proposed EIP-7782, which plans to reduce the block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds, which will effectively improve network throughput and transaction confirmation speed.

These technological evolutions will provide solid support for Ethereum's positioning as the "global programmable digital asset settlement layer."

Third, Deflationary Economic Model, Scarcity Creates Value

In his 2025 roadmap, Vitalik Buterin emphasized "single-slot finality" technology, which will reduce transaction confirmation time from 15 minutes to seconds. At the same time, he promoted "stateless Ethereum" to lower the threshold for node operation and improve decentralization.

The core driving force behind Ethereum's move towards $10,000 comes not only from technological upgrades, but also from its carefully designed deflationary economic model.

"UltraSound Money's vision of 'great deflation' will eventually come." Blockchain researcher Haotian wrote on the occasion of Ethereum's tenth anniversary,

"UltraSound Money's vision of 'great deflation' will eventually come." Blockchain researcher Haotian wrote on the occasion of Ethereum's tenth anniversary,

"EIP-1559's burning deflation mechanism and the economic model of POS staking income are exquisite. The burning mechanism + POS staking income + Layer2 Fee feedback, once this combination of punches is effectively implemented, Ethereum is bound to move towards the 'great deflation era'."

Compared with Bitcoin's limited value capture ability, the "long-term expectations" superimposed on Ethereum's multi-layered income model are showing an overwhelming advantage.

The optimization of the validator economic model will further strengthen this trend. As the staking threshold is lowered and the yield rate increases, more ETH will be locked in the staking contract.

If the ETH staking rate increases from the current 25% to over 40%, the circulating supply will be significantly reduced.

Institutional investors have already seen this trend. A large proportion of the ETH held by listed companies is used for staking to generate returns.

SharpLink uses almost all of its ETH holdings for staking, with an annualized return of approximately 3%-4%. At the end of the first quarter, Bit Digital had approximately 88% of its ETH participating in verification. Strategic ETH Reserve data shows that the total value of corporate ETH reserves has exceeded US$10.5 billion, accounting for 2.26% of the total ETH supply. Bitmine Immersion Tech is targeting 5% of the total Ethereum supply (approximately 6 million tokens), creating expectations of long-term deflation. Staking not only provides stable returns but also reduces market selling pressure, creating conditions for price increases. If the ETH spot ETF staking is approved (with a probability exceeding 70%), it will open up trillions of dollars in traditional capital. The staking income model gives ETH the attributes of a "digital bond," and its conservative valuation can be benchmarked against U.S. Treasury yields: if the annualized return reaches 6%, a trillion-dollar market capitalization would correspond to a price of approximately $8,300. Breaking through $10,000 requires a resonance between returns and tight circulation. 4. Institutional-grade infrastructure, a bridge for traditional capital to enter the market. For Ethereum to reach $10,000, it is inseparable from the large-scale entry of traditional institutional capital, and this process is accelerating. The institutional-grade infrastructure built by listed companies is becoming a bridge for traditional capital to enter the Ethereum ecosystem.

Andrew Keys, co-founder and chairman of Ethermachine, said: "Adding ETH to the allocation on the 10th anniversary of Ethereum is a reflection of the long-term confidence in Ethereum as the underlying asset of the global decentralized economy.

Bit Digital holds approximately 120,300 ETH,

Bit Digital holds approximately 120,300 ETH,

When Jinyong Investment allocated tens of millions of dollars to invest in Ethereum, and when Ethermachine prepared to become the first Nasdaq-listed company with Ethereum reserves, a revolution in enterprise-level asset allocation had begun. The perfect combination of technological breakthroughs and economic models is injecting unprecedented momentum into Ethereum. The integration of zkEVM will reduce verification time to less than 10 seconds, the RISC-V architecture may reduce gas costs by 70%, and the synergy between the main chain and the second-layer network is expected to integrate $120 billion in liquidity, moving towards a total locked value of $200 billion. The current 1.97 million ETH held by institutions is just the beginning - When the balance sheets of listed companies complete the migration from the "dollar standard" to the "ETH standard", the trillion-dollar market value will become the starting point of the next generation of financial infrastructure.