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Ethereum treasury companies swell as spot ETFs notch fifth straight month of positive inflows

The network’s monthly on-chain volume has climbed to a four-year high, jumping past $346 billion in August.

Sage D. Young

Ethereum has dropped from the $4,650 level last week to trade around $4,300 Tuesday morning. The price action comes as US spot ethereum ETFs notched over $1 billion in inflows last week, according to SoSoValue.

Ethereum ETFs have now had five consecutive months of positive inflows, totaling close to $11.1 billion or 82% of their cumulative inflows since inception. 

The network’s monthly on-chain volume, which measures economic throughput stemming from transaction transfers and decentralized finance activity, has also climbed to a four-year high, jumping past $346 billion in August. The last time ethereum’s on-chain monthly volume had seen this level was May 2021, per The Block.

Meanwhile, ethereum treasury companies have had a busy Tuesday, making several announcements about their crypto holdings, activity in the decentralized finance ecosystem, and capital raises:

  • BitMine Immersion Technologies announced its holdings have grown to about 1.9 million ethereum tokens, 192 bitcoin, and $635 million in cash, bringing its total holdings to almost $9 billion, according to a Tuesday press release. Since launching its treasury strategy at the end of June, BitMine has become the largest ethereum treasury firm and the second-biggest crypto treasury overall, just behind bitcoin behemoth Strategy.

  • SharpLink Gaming announced it had purchased 39,008 ethereum tokens for an average purchase price of $4,531 and raised $46.6 million through its at-the-market facility in the week ended August 31. The company’s total has increased to 837,230 ethereum worth more than $3.6 billion.

  • ETHZilla, backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, said it plans to deploy about $100 million of ethereum into decentralized finance protocol EtherFi to generate higher yields on its crypto assets, per a press release. The move, which is ETHZilla’s first engagement with DeFi protocols, comes as the firm said it holds 102,246 ethereum tokens and $221 million in cash equivalents.

  • The Ether Machine has raised 150,000 ethereum tokens worth roughly $654 million of committed financing from Jeffery Berns, founder of crypto firm Blockchains. A press release states the company’s total committed crypto holdings have swelled to 495,362 ethereum tokens worth nearly $2.2 billion with $367 million in cash for further acquisition. The Ether Machine, the third-largest ethereum treasury company, behind BitMine and SharpLink, has plans to go public after a pending business combination with Dynamix Corporation and The Ether Reserve LLC. 

  • Finally, Yunfeng Financial Group Limited, based in Hong Kong, announced plans for a strategic expansion by increasing its investments in digital currencies. With the firm’s board approval, Yunfeng purchased a total of 10,000 ethererum tokens funded by internal cash reserves. The company is affiliated with Jack Ma, founder of the world’s largest e-commerce platform, Alibaba, said Vivek Raman, the founder of Etherealize.

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$1.2B

Crypto liquidations reached $1.2 billion in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data, as bitcoin continued its downward trajectory. Bitcoin suffered $458.24 million in liquidations, with the bulk of them — over $334 million — in long positions. Meanwhile, the second-biggest crypto, ethereum, saw the second-biggest figure for liquidations yesterday, with $278 million.

Bitcoin slipped as far as $103,856 early Friday morning, its lowest level since July, and is down 13% in the past seven days. The sell-off dragged the total crypto market cap down to $3.67 trillion, down 5.5%. Underscoring the market anxiety, CoinMarketCap’s fear and greed index is now at 28.

Bitcoin ETFs also suffered, registering $536 million in outflows on Thursday. The Ark 21 Shares Bitcoin ETF took the biggest hit, with $275.15 million in outflows. Since Monday, bitcoin ETFs have seen $864.5 million in outflows. 

Maja Vujinovic, CEO and cofounder of digital assets at FG Nexus, told Sherwood News that bitcoin’s slump looks like a classic risk-off chain reaction.

“Credit jitters and trade tensions pushed money into gold at record highs while leveraged crypto longs were forced to unwind. Once the liquidations exhaust and policy fog clears, the same macro buyers chasing safety today are likely to hunt value in BTC again,” Vujinovic said. 

$15B

The US government seized 127,271 bitcoin, worth $15 billion, in what it calls the Department of Justice’s “largest ever forfeiture action.”

The indictment against Chen Zhi, chairman of Cambodian conglomerate Prince Group, alleges that he engaged in wire fraud conspiracy using forced labor in Cambodia.

“Individuals held against their will in the compounds engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, known as ‘pig butchering’ scams, that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world. The defendant is at large,” according to a DOJ press release.

This is “exactly the kind of outcome the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve was designed to enable,” Zack Shapiro, managing partner at Rains Law and head of policy of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, said on X.

This significantly increases the size of the US’s strategic reserve, which held over 197,000 bitcoin before the seizure. As of today, Arkham Intelligence data shows it’s holding 324,780 bitcoin, worth over $37 billion.

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