The Ethereum community has been awash with bearish sentiment after Bankless co-founder David Hoffman published a widely read piece explaining his decision to exit ETH entirely. With 1.8 million views on X, the post struck a chord with many holders. Yet one of the loudest counterpoints came from Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET), the second-largest publicly listed ETH treasury company with about 868,000 ETH (worth nearly $1.8 billion). On May 30, Chalom released an open letter titled “Ethereum Going Back on Offense”, aiming to restore confidence. His blunt analogy: “Selling ETH now is like selling Amazon during the dot-com crash.” Odaily Planet Daily has translated the full text; here are the key takeaways.
(Note: Standard Chartered has previously drawn a similar comparison, emphasizing the stark divergence between ETH fundamentals and its price.)
A Decade of Delivery: Trust and Security as the Foundation
Chalom opens by arguing that the noise around the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and ETH price volatility has obscured the network’s real achievements. In the three dimensions institutions care most about—trust, security, and liquidity—Ethereum remains unrivalled. It settles the vast majority of global stablecoin value, hosts tokenized real-world asset (RWA) projects far ahead of any other chain, and is the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions. This dominance is no accident; it stems from EF’s disciplined protocol development. Ethereum is the only blockchain to have successfully delivered major base-layer upgrades for ten consecutive years: The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka, and the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, which will deliver a step-change in scalability and push the industry toward quantum resistance. It is the most ambitious technical roadmap in the space.
Decentralization Is Not a Bug, It’s a Feature
Addressing the criticism that EF’s decentralization is a weakness, Chalom pushes back firmly. He points out that Ethereum has by far the largest developer community, and the vast majority are not affiliated with EF. No single foundation should control a blockchain, because institutions will not migrate from proprietary systems just to be locked into another. Credible neutrality and decentralization are precisely what make Ethereum the settlement layer of the future. “Between a foundation focused on security, privacy, quantum resistance, and the core protocol, and one optimized for short-term marketing, I’ll choose the former every time,” he writes.
The Amazon Moment: An Undervalued Financial Infrastructure
Chalom draws a parallel between Ethereum today and Amazon during the dot-com bust. Back then, foundational innovation was overlooked while short-term sentiment ruled, and pessimists were proven wrong. Similarly, Ethereum’s total addressable market is not cryptocurrency trading—it is the entire global financial system. ETH’s intrinsic value is tied to network expansion, and the network is on the cusp of an explosive increase in transaction volume driven by stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, DeFi, and the emerging wave of agentic finance. As the demand-heavy incentive layer and ultimate trust infrastructure, Ethereum will see its monetary premium rise alongside network growth.
Counter-Cyclical Wisdom: From Buffett to BlackRock
Chalom invokes Warren Buffett’s classic moves—buying GEICO in the 1970s and Bank of America and Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis—to illustrate the value of disciplined, counter-cyclical investing. He speaks from experience: before leading Sharplink, he spent two decades at BlackRock as a senior executive in fintech and digital asset strategy. During the crypto winter following FTX’s collapse, when most institutions reduced exposure or shelved product launches, Chalom’s team doubled down—investing in infrastructure, forging ecosystem partnerships, and rolling out products that bridged traditional finance and crypto. With the Fear and Greed Index still wallowing in extreme fear territory, Chalom sees this as an opportunity for disciplined capital.
New Voices Needed: Ecosystem Must Lead the Institutional Narrative
The EF is increasingly focusing on the CROPS framework—censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security—turning the core protocol into “haven technology.” This shift means the foundation is doubling down on long-term protocol security and user privacy, rather than aggressive scaling. Chalom argues that go-to-market leadership and institutional adoption must now be carried by ecosystem stakeholders. He lists active contributors: Sharplink, BitMine’s Tom Lee, Consensys’ Joe Lubin, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, the EEA, and others, all working closely with a small internal EF team focused on institutional education. Sharplink itself was among the first to stake billions of dollars in ETH capital and deploy hundreds of millions into high-quality DeFi protocols; it also recently announced a $125 million DeFi yield fund with Galaxy Digital to provide capital to existing and emerging protocols.
Chalom closes with a call to action: as regulatory frameworks clear and institutional capital floods in, Ethereum’s stakeholders must actively shape the narrative and embrace the coming institutional supercycle. “When the market is most fearful, that’s when the smartest investors buy quality assets,” he wrote. “Ethereum is in that moment.”
(Further reading: “Bankless Co-founder's ETH Exit Confession: Ethereum Did the Right Thing, but ETH as Money Has No Future”)