This week, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman wrote an article explaining why he sold all his Ether, resonating deeply with the community and garnering 1.8 million views on X. As the second-largest Ether treasury company with 868,000 ETH (worth nearly $1.8 billion), Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET) responded swiftly. CEO Joseph Chalom, a former BlackRock executive with two decades of experience in fintech and digital asset strategy, published "Ethereum Going Back on Offense," aiming to restore confidence among ETH holders and provide a broader institutional perspective.
A Decade of Protocol Innovation Wins Institutional Trust
Ethereum processes the majority of global stablecoin value settlements, hosts far more tokenized real-world asset projects than any other chain, and serves as the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions. Chalom emphasizes that this dominance is no accident but the result of ten years of rigorous protocol development by the Ethereum Foundation (EF). From The Merge and EIP-1559 to Dencun, Pectra, and Fusaka, Ethereum is the only blockchain to continuously deliver major base-layer upgrades. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will bring massive scalability, and the EF is leading the industry toward quantum resistance—the most ambitious technical roadmap in the space.
Responding to intense criticism of the EF, Chalom argues that viewing decentralization as a weakness completely reverses institutional logic. Ethereum boasts the largest developer community of any blockchain, with the vast majority independent of the EF. He asserts that no single foundation should control a chain, and institutions won’t simply trade one proprietary system for another. Ethereum’s credible neutrality and decentralization are precisely why it can become the settlement layer of future finance—these are not flaws. "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," he states.
Mispriced Like Amazon: ETH’s Global Financial TAM
Chalom compares Ethereum’s current position to Amazon during the dot-com bubble burst—foundational innovation overlooked and pessimists proven wrong by history. Just as Amazon was underestimated, Ethereum’s total addressable market is not crypto trading but the entire global financial system. With the convergence of stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, DeFi, and the emerging wave of agentic finance, Ethereum’s transaction volume is at a tipping point for exponential growth. As the ultimate trust infrastructure and incentive layer, ETH’s monetary premium will rise in tandem with network expansion. Standard Chartered has also drawn similar parallels, highlighting the severe disconnect between ETH’s fundamentals and its current price.
Buying Fear: Lessons from Buffett and BlackRock
For most of the past year, the Fear & Greed Index has reflected extreme fear. Chalom points out that the smartest investors buy quality assets when fear peaks, investing counter-cyclically. Warren Buffett built Berkshire by buying into pessimism—from GEICO in the 1970s to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis. In the crypto winter after FTX’s collapse, most institutions retreated from Bitcoin and ETH exposure or shelved product launches, but at BlackRock, Chalom and his team doubled down: investing in infrastructure, building partnerships, and launching products bridging traditional finance with crypto. "We can all learn a great deal from Buffett and BlackRock," he advises.
New Voices Needed for Institutional Supercycle
Chalom acknowledges that the EF is fulfilling its core mission and will increasingly focus on its CROPS framework (censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security), turning Ethereum into "safe harbor technology." However, he believes there is a clear gap in market-facing leadership. He strongly advocates that ecosystem stakeholders must play a larger role in shaping Ethereum’s narrative and driving institutional adoption. Since last summer, entities like Sharplink, BitMine’s Tom Lee, Consensys’ Joe Lubin, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, and EEA have been collaborating closely with a small EF team focused on institutional education and adoption.
Sharplink is actively investing in the ecosystem. Chalom reveals that the company was the first to stake billions in ETH capital and has deployed hundreds of millions into high-quality DeFi protocols. Recently, Sharplink announced a $125 million DeFi yield fund with Galaxy Digital to provide capital for existing and emerging protocols, further solidifying its commitment to Ethereum’s long-term growth.
Despite these moves, Chalom says Sharplink will become more vocal and proactive in championing Ethereum, supporting what he sees as an impending institutional adoption supercycle. He urges the ecosystem not to waste the current period of undervaluation and to collectively turn Ethereum’s long-term value narrative into concrete adoption.
Recommended reading: "Bankless co-founder’s ETH exodus: Ethereum did the right thing, but ‘ETH as money’ has no future."