This week, the Ethereum community was shaken when Bankless co-founder David Hoffman published an article explaining why he sold all his ETH, which garnered 1.8 million views on X. In response, Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET)—the second-largest publicly listed ETH treasury company with roughly 868,000 ETH worth nearly $1.8 billion—released a piece titled “Ethereum Going Back on Offense” to restore confidence among ETH holders. Chalom asserted that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is fulfilling its core duties by focusing on security, decentralization, and core protocol development, which form the bedrock of institutional trust. He compared Ethereum today to Amazon during the dot-com bubble, believing the asset is significantly undervalued and that market fear presents a unique opportunity for disciplined capital.
A Decade of Technical Leadership
Chalom emphasized that Ethereum is far ahead in the attributes that institutions value most: trust, security, and liquidity. Data shows that Ethereum handles the vast majority of global stablecoin value settlement, hosts more tokenized real-world asset (RWA) projects than any other chain, and serves as the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions. These strengths stem from the EF's rigorous multi-year protocol development. Ethereum is the only blockchain that has successfully delivered major upgrades at the base layer for ten consecutive years—The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka, with the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade promising a leap in scalability, while the EF leads the industry toward a post-quantum era. Moreover, Ethereum boasts the largest developer community of any blockchain, the vast majority of which is not affiliated with the EF, underscoring the value of decentralization.
The EF's Core Mission, Not a Weakness
Addressing critics who see decentralization as a weakness, Chalom argued that institutions do not want to migrate from one proprietary system to another; they need assurance that the underlying properties won’t be altered by a centralized owner. Ethereum’s credible neutrality is precisely what makes it the future financial settlement layer. The EF has refocused through the CROPS framework (censorship resistance, openness, privacy, security), prioritizing fundamental long-term protocol safety and user privacy over aggressive scaling. Chalom stated, “Between a foundation focused on security, privacy, quantum resistance, and core protocol versus one optimized for short-term marketing, I choose the former every time.”
The Amazon Analogy: Undervalued ETH
Chalom compared today’s ETH to Amazon during the dot-com bust. He stressed that Ethereum’s total addressable market is not crypto trading, but the entire global financial system. With the wave of stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, DeFi, and emerging agentic finance, the Ethereum network is on the cusp of exponential transaction volume growth. As the incentive layer and ultimate trust infrastructure that secures such massive settlement, ETH’s monetary premium will expand. Standard Chartered has also made similar comparisons, noting the severe divergence between ETH’s fundamentals and its price.
Buying When Fear Peaks
Recalling his time at BlackRock, where he served as a senior executive for two decades overseeing fintech and digital asset strategy, Chalom noted that after the FTX collapse, most institutions pulled back from BTC and ETH exposure or delayed product launches. Instead, BlackRock doubled down, invested in infrastructure, and launched products bridging traditional finance and crypto. He cited Warren Buffett’s approach of buying quality assets at maximum pessimism, pointing out that the Fear & Greed Index has reflected extreme fear for much of the past year. The smartest investors, he argued, buy quality assets when the market is most afraid, moving counter-cyclically.
Sharplink’s Actions and Ecosystem Investment
As the second-largest ETH treasury company, Sharplink has already taken tangible steps. It became the first company to stake billions of dollars in ETH and deployed hundreds of millions into high-quality DeFi protocols. The firm recently announced a $125 million DeFi yield fund together with Galaxy Digital to provide capital for existing and emerging protocols. Chalom affirmed that Sharplink will continue to actively champion Ethereum and proactively support the coming institutional adoption super-cycle.
New Voices for Ethereum
Chalom believes that while the EF is delivering on its core duties under CROPS, the current challenge lies in marketing leadership. He called on ecosystem stakeholders to step up their role in shaping the narrative and driving institutional adoption. Since last summer, digital asset treasury companies and core Ethereum stewards—including Sharplink, BitMine’s Tom Lee, Consensys’ Joe Lubin, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance—have been working closely with small teams within the EF focused on institutional education and adoption to propel Ethereum into its next phase of institutional growth.
