SharpLink Helmsman: Only Buy, Never Sell — Making ETH Profitable in the Bear Market

Original article fromTony Edward

Compiled by Odaily Qin Xiaofeng (@QinXiaofeng 888 )

Editor's Note: At the recent Injective Summit 2026 in Washington, SharpLink Co-CEO Joseph Chalom gave an exclusive interview.

He stated that while the market is currently pessimistic about Ethereum, there is a divergence between the reality and market sentiment. In fact, multiple data points from the Ethereum ecosystem indicate a promising future: it accounts for over 50% of stablecoin transaction volume, nearly 60% of tokenized RWA, and its DeFi dominance remains unchallenged. He said, "Ethereum is winning, but there's a communication problem." SharpLink has joined forces with giants like ConsenSys to fund three core teams spun off from the Ethereum Foundation, focusing on institutional-grade scaling, privacy compliance, and market adoption. More critically, they maintain zero leverage and no debt during the bear market, insist on making ETH "productive" to generate revenue, and predict that tokenization and 24/7 trading will trigger the next institutional rush.

This week, ETH briefly approached $2000, and the ETH/BTC ratio reached 0.03, hitting a nearly 3-month high, seemingly signaling that things are turning around. Furthermore, after roughly 8 months without significant new purchases, SharpLink bought another 10,000 ETH in June of this year at an average cost of about $1,611, bringing its total ETH holdings to 886,725 ETH.

The following is the full text of the interview. Enjoy~

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Host (Tony Edward / Thinking Crypto): Everyone, we're recording at the Injective Policy Summit in Washington D.C. Joining me today is Joseph Chalom, CEO of SharpLink. Joseph, great to see you.

Joseph Chalom: Great to speak with you again. First, let me introduce ourselves. We are a digital asset treasury management company. We've raised billions of dollars to purchase Ethereum (ETH) and make it very efficient. The two most interesting things that have happened in the past month are: First, we returned to the public market for an equity raise, effectively buying back ETH and some of our stock at very good prices. Second, alongside Joe Lubin from ConsenSys and Tom Lee from Bitmine, we've started to support and invest in spin-off projects within the Ethereum ecosystem, which will be very positive for Ethereum's new narrative and new era.

Host: There has been a lot of negative sentiment around ETH recently, including some criticism of the Ethereum Foundation. Do you think this negativity is just a symptom of the bear market?

Joseph Chalom: Actually, I think over the past year and a half or so, there has been a divergence between the reality and market sentiment.

The reality is, let's start with the very positive side. The Ethereum ecosystem accounts for over 50% of all stablecoin transaction volume and nearly 60% of tokenized real-world assets. The vast majority of DeFi is built on Ethereum. So if you look at the report card, they are winning. The sentiment is quite negative largely due to the industry's general downturn and the Ethereum Foundation — despite doing an excellent job over the past decade or so — making decisions to downsize and let more ecosystem participants support the roadmap. This style of communication has led to a lack of clarity and confidence within the ecosystem, even as it is actually winning.

Therefore, some of us, as ecosystem stewards and large ETH holders, have stepped up. We are backing our position with action, and I'd be happy to share some of the things we are doing collectively as an industry.

Host: Let's dive deeper. What are the specific initiatives?

Joseph Chalom: Let's start with the positive side. Ethereum is the longest-running blockchain, aside from Bitcoin, among all other chains. It has never gone down, and it is the most secure, most trusted, and most liquid. It also has a multi-year, very aggressive scaling roadmap.

Today, their mission and approach are to return to their roots. The Ethereum Foundation will focus on privacy, censorship resistance, and some core principles to ensure Ethereum remains credibly neutral for decades to come. But this means some of the most critical talent and functions within the foundation are being spun out. In the last three weeks or so, three teams have been spun out from the Ethereum Foundation and have received support from Joe Lubin, myself, and Tom Lee of Bitmine. These are actually very important for institutional adoption.

Let me tell you who they are. The first is ETH Labs, which comprises some of the most powerful developers in the Ethereum ecosystem. They are building the scaling capabilities that institutions need. The second is Ethereum Institutional, which is the front-end, business development arm of Ethereum bringing it to market, and it has been spun out from the foundation with our support. Earlier this week, the three of us also funded EthSystems, which is building next-generation privacy and compliance capabilities on Ethereum. This is an absolute necessity for the largest institutions to transact and ensure their data privacy. While it might sound like three independent nodes in the ecosystem, these are the three most important things driving institutional adoption over the next year and beyond.

Host: That's very interesting. I see many institutions starting with Ethereum when preparing for tokenization and diving into DeFi. Eventually, they might expand to other chains.

Joseph Chalom: Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, Ethereum has the characteristics institutions need. I spent 20 years at BlackRock, and I know that before you want to migrate financial rails that are 40, 50, 60 years old, you'll want to migrate to a system that is trusted, never goes down, is secure, and has the deepest liquidity. Most importantly, decentralization isn't talked about enough.

A truly decentralized blockchain means that once a decision is made, the rules cannot be changed. Therefore, having a fully distributed, decentralized chain with no single person or single treasury controlling it is extremely important for institutions, as they are undertaking a once-in-a-generation infrastructure migration.

Host: Completely agree. During the bear market, how did SharpLink create value for its shareholders? Was it through staking DeFi protocols to generate passive income?

Joseph Chalom: Of course. During the digital asset treasury management boom last summer, there were about six or seven Ethereum digital asset treasury management companies, and maybe five Solana ones that launched. Only a few of us were able to raise billions of dollars and achieve a scaled launch speed. In this industry, you need scale to compete.

What we did was, first, buy ETH with all this capital, and then from day one, make it productive, because ETH itself is a productive asset. You can stake it and earn 2.5% to 3%. We've been doing that and making it more efficient than this benchmark. We've also been participating in DeFi. We announced a $125 million fund in partnership with another public company, Galaxy, to deploy our ETH into new protocols, help them launch, and gain what's called TVL (Total Value Locked) or initial capital. So, we're making ETH more productive than native staking.

Finally, I'd say when you face a consolidation period, a crypto winter, a cycle just three months after starting your business, you really see who is running a public company in an institutional way. We didn't take on debt, we didn't issue preferred shares, we didn't use our ETH as collateral for loans. We decided to be conservative during the winter. A handful of us survived, holding billions of dollars worth of ETH. That's how we protected our investors.

Honestly, going through the winter wasn't fun, but treating investors with respect has always been our motivation. You know, after winter comes spring and summer. When the market recovers, we are in a very good position. And we are starting to see ETH's recovery. Just since these recent announcements, ETH is up about 20% from its lows. The short-term situation is indeed challenging, but the long-term adoption story has never been more optimistic.

Host: That's really great to hear. I love that you didn't take on debt, because I think that's risky and somewhat against the spirit of crypto.

Joseph Chalom: Yes, you know, I have a lot of respect for Michael Saylor; he truly invented a new vehicle for asset exposure. You can own a public company and thereby gain exposure to Bitcoin.

The challenge in the Bitcoin space is that it is not productive by itself. The only way to keep accumulating Bitcoin and making it productive is to financialize your stock, issue convertible bonds, preferred shares. Then you can get into a situation where you eventually have to sell your reserve asset. This has always been a challenge for the Bitcoin community, because digital asset treasury companies, including Michael Saylor's, have gone from being large net buyers of Bitcoin to now being sellers, which is very negative for short-term price action.

Host: Absolutely right. Joseph, with your background at BlackRock and traditional finance, you have extensive experience. What's your outlook on institutional adoption of this technology? It seems like everyone on Wall Street is looking at tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi.

Joseph Chalom: Yes, I think the tokenization space — whether it's tokenizing the dollar into stablecoins or tokenizing treasuries or real-world assets — has been a phenomenon for about 8 or 9 years now.

Progress has been quite slow so far, primarily due to a lack of regulatory clarity. I want to describe in very simple terms how these things work together and how they stack on top of each other.

You can think of stablecoins as the dollar or value layer of future finance. You can think of tokenized assets as the asset exposure layer. DeFi is the execution layer. If you have the money layer, the exposure layer, and the execution layer, you are ready to go. You are starting to see not just tokenization of new funds, but also tokenization of existing multi-billion dollar funds and stocks. Getting a bit more complex, there's another layer: you have cash, assets, and the execution layer. Agentic (AI agents) will be the automation layer.

I think we are currently in the bottom of the first inning. We are waiting for more regulatory clarity, but institutions have moved from the learning phase to the experimentation phase and are now entering the production phase. It is now a race not to be left behind.

Host: Do you feel that once the Clarity Act passes, it will act as a catalyst or give confidence for institutions to innovate and invest more?

Joseph Chalom: 100% agree. I think the Clarity Act is very important in two ways. First, it clarifies that if you are a DeFi developer, you are a software provider, and you are not responsible for actions that occur on your software. But if you, as a DeFi protocol, hold customer assets, then you are regulated and responsible for what happens. So the future of DeFi is brighter because of the Clarity Act.

The second point is, I think it will also impact market sentiment and momentum. In the crypto space, even a little bit of wind at your back can bring massive development.

Thirdly, if you are in a large institution and your leadership is interested in digital assets, having a government "good housekeeping" seal of approval gives you more leeway to accelerate things you would otherwise do slowly. I think we will see a lot of momentum this summer. And I think we will reach a point where tokenization becomes the norm, not the exception.

Host: Do you think there will be major challenges when some companies tokenize and traditional markets still exist? For example, you could have a tokenized version of Tesla stock, but traditional stock still exists on the stock market. What differences or problems do you see arising?

Joseph Chalom: I think the biggest challenge is the existence of different liquidity pools. For tokenization to be successful, we need to ensure that the digital version of a stock or fund has comparable trading volume and liquidity to its traditional counterpart. But anytime there is technological progress, analog and digital coexist. It's like slow trains and high-speed trains running on parallel tracks; eventually, they all become high-speed.

But I think the more important tipping point is this: Imagine a world where your government announces war in the Middle East on a Friday night. Suppose you hold the analog version of a certain stock in your portfolio, and you want to sell it. If you hold the digital version, you can trade 24/7 and express your view. You want to go long on oil companies? Yes. You want to sell consumer cyclical stocks? Yes, you can.

At some point, a fiduciary deciding between buying the analog version or the digital on-chain version will almost certainly choose to buy and hold the on-chain version because it can trade 24/7, is programmable, and settles instantly. So the fiduciary will reach a point and say to themselves: I cannot hold the slow analog version because I can't express my view on the weekend. So at some point, there will be a tipping point, and I think that's still a few years away.

Host: That's an excellent point. As the market moves towards 24/7 trading, you are almost at a disadvantage if you are still using the analog version. You have to move to the tokenized digital version.

Joseph Chalom: Yes. But you need the liquidity to tilt towards the more liquid version, because that's also important.

Host: I guess that's why stock exchanges, large institutions, and banks are moving towards a 24/7 market. It makes a lot of sense.

Joseph Chalom: Yes. Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are transitioning to 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, or 24-hour trading. Just this week, the DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation), which processes roughly $400 trillion in transactions annually for clearing and settlement, just launched on-chain collateral tokenization. So, I think this is very exciting. Every day you see announcements that would have been market-shaking three or four years ago, but now seem commonplace. That's when you know the momentum is here.

Host: Absolutely right. It feels like this asset class is maturing. We are entering a new phase of adoption. This is remarkable. One final thing, could you share your roadmap?

Joseph Chalom: I think the most important thing SharpLink is doing right now, besides accumulating ETH and making it productive (we have consistently been one of the most productive digital asset treasury companies for our ETH), is stepping up to do something we never expected we'd need to do: become ecosystem stewards. Not just with words, but by putting capital into new capabilities, into the spin-out projects from the Ethereum Foundation, and essentially helping bring Ethereum to market.

I'm often asked: Whose interest does this serve? The answer is, it serves the interests of our shareholders; it is fully aligned. So, helping Ethereum win, whether Layer 1 or Layer 2, and telling the story of why the ETH token will become a highly demanded settlement and trust commodity, is actually in the interest of our investors. So, together with our ecosystem partners, we will invest and strive to be very good stewards. What we won't do is participate in the core protocol; that is completely decentralized. We will not participate in the governance of Ethereum, but we will participate in funding talent and funding go-to-market capabilities, which is in the long-term interest of our investors.

(End)