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Ethereum treasury firms surpass bitcoin treasury companies by percentage of total supply

Asia’s institutional conviction for the second-largest cryptocurrency deepens as Tokyo-listed Quantum Solutions scoops up about 2,000 ethereum tokens through its subsidiary.

Sage D. Young

Ethereum treasury firms have taken the lead over their bitcoin counterparts by percentage of total supply, with 4% held by these companies, a higher figure than the 3.6% of bitcoin’s supply held by treasury firms, data from blockchain analytics firm Artemis shows. 

The flip occurred quickly, as BitMine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink Gaming, which own the bulk majority of the ethereum tokens held by corporate firms, jump-started their strategies this year, while Michael Saylor-led Strategy, the top dog among bitcoin treasuries, began its accumulation in August 2020.

Percentage of bitcoin, ethereum, and solana’s total supply owned by digital asset treasury firms. (Artemis)
Percentage of bitcoin, ethereum, and solana’s total supply owned by digital asset treasury firms. (Artemis)

Meanwhile, Quantum Solutions, an AI-focused company headquartered in Tokyo and backed by Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, announced acquiring 2,000 ethereum tokens through its subsidiary GPT Pals Studio Limited. The firm’s total holdings now stand at 3,865.8 tokens worth nearly $15 million, making it the largest Japanese treasury firm in the space.

The second-largest Japanese ethereum treasury firm, Def Consulting, also announced acquiring 50 million yen of ethereum, or nearly $330,000 at current exchange rates. 

Noah Roy, an investment analyst at Ryze Labs, told Sherwood News, “Institutional accumulation and the growth of ethereum-based treasuries point to a maturing demand base and reinforce confidence in its long-term role in digital finance.” 

The developments highlight how institutional conviction in ethereum remains strong, especially in Asia, where firms are positioning for the long term and have deeper balance sheet integrations, added Omer Goldberg, the founder and CEO of risk management firm Chaos Labs. 

“However, this accumulation hasn’t yet been enough to decouple ethereum from broader macro pressures. Global trade tensions and risk-off sentiment are still suppressing valuations across all risk assets,” Goldberg said to Sherwood. 

“What we’re seeing now is less about short-term price action and more about structural belief in ethereum’s future utility and scarcity,” he continued. “Unless we get some clarity or de-escalation on the geopolitical side, isolated institutional buys won’t meaningfully shift the trend this month.”

Based on Robinhood’s event contracts, market-implied probabilities show that traders have a bearish view on ethereum’s price trajectory, indicating there’s a 61% chance the asset’s price falls below $3,250 before the end of the year.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

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Hyperliquid reclaims all-time high

HYPE, the native token powering perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain, rebounded to reclaim its all-time high previously set at the start of the month.

Treasury firms Hyperliquid Strategies and Hyperion DeFi have also rallied as the token increased double digits in the last 24 hours to trade as high as $76.70, rising past its record price set nearly two weeks ago, according to CoinGecko. In the interim between all-time highs, HYPE pulled back to around $53.

The token has several tailwinds, the first coming from ETF flows. Since their inception in May, HYPE ETFs have yet to record negative weekly outflows, posting a cumulative total net inflow of $171.8 million, per SoSoValue.

The second comes from Hyperliquid spending basically everything it earns in fees to buy HYPE, a mechanism embedded into the protocol’s codebase.

The venue’s buyback funding mechanism is set to add a new source of yield. Validators of the network activated “AQAv2,” which means stablecoin deployers will share about 90% of reserve yield revenue on their supply within the protocol.

Around $6.1 billion of Circle’s USDC resides in Hyperliquid, per DefiLlama. Accrual begins on August 26 and the first payment is made on October 3, the network announced in its Discord channel last week.

A substantial amount of capital is riding on different positions of HYPE. In total, a move down to under $53 would result in the liquidation nearly 1.8 million HYPE worth of leveraged long positions on the on-chain perps venue, or $131.7 million, data from CoinGlass shows. For the upside, a climb above $100 results in the liquidation of more than 3 million worth of leveraged HYPE short positions, or $221.5 million.

HYPE’s rebound to all-time high comes after Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, defended his agency’s decision to approve regulated perpetuals, or futures contracts without expiration dates, CNBC reported on Monday.

Last month, the CFTC approved bitcoin perpetual futures trading in the US through regulated prediction markets firm Kalshi and an affiliate of centralized exchange Coinbase.

“Perps are highly likely to become lightly regulated and thus approved in the US,” said David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund.

“We expect to see perps for many different types of assets, from commodities to equities,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

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