There has been a recent and rapidly rising trend of corporations acquiring Ethereum (ETH) for their treasuries, following an earlier and consistently growing trend of companies building Bitcoin treasuries.
According to Strategic ETH Reserve data, 71 ETH-focused treasury firms currently hold 3.57 million ETH, valued at some $16 billion, or nearly 3% of the coin’s total supply. Moreover, data suggests there are plans in motion for firms to acquire roughly $27 billion more of ETH, potentially capturing 10% of the coin’s total supply. The bulk of this planned investment comes from the Crypto mining and treasury company BitMine Immersion Technologies, which on Aug 12 filed an amendmentto expand its at-the-market equity program by $20 billion to boost its acquisitions of ETH.
ETH advocate and chief information officer of Fundstrat Capital, Thomas Lee, is calling ETH the biggest macro trade “for the next 10 to 15 years as AI creates a token economy on the blockchain and as Wall Street financializes on the blockchain.”
Indeed, for anyone who follows the blockchain and crypto space – and what institutional buyers recognize – is that Ethereum is the backbone of the rapidly growing decentralized finance ecosystem with real utility for lending, borrowing, and payments without traditional banks. That’s right, Ethereum – and other blockchains such as XRP Ledger and Solana, are reshaping finance and squeezing out the jurassic traditional banking system, which still uses technology from the 1960s for cross border payments (think SWIFT).
But it is not a zero-sum game. Forward looking banks are acknowledging the potential of Ethereum “as a cornerstone of the future financial infrastructure,” while analysts such as Lee anticipate that banks will soon start acquiring Ethereum to support their stablecoins.
As AInvest recently reported:
“This shift is driven by the growing demand for stablecoins, which are increasingly being adopted by both consumers and large institutions. Over 51% of stablecoins currently run on the Ethereum network, making it the backbone of the stablecoin ecosystem.
Lee described stablecoin development as the “ChatGPT moment for crypto,” driving unprecedented Wall Street interest in building on Ethereum’s blockchain.
As Wall Street and traditional banks lean more towards Ethereum, these early ETH treasury firms will be laughing all the way to the bank, or rather the blockchain.
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