How do you save an ailing publicly traded firm in 2025? One reply, and an more and more well-liked one at that, is: pivot to crypto—or extra particularly, develop into a crypto treasury firm.
The beforehand unknown on-line playing marketer SharpLink Gaming did simply that earlier this week, when it introduced it had raised $425 million in funding to ascertain an Ethereum treasury. It was a notable departure from the extra frequent route of constructing a Bitcoin treasury, with Ethereum being the second largest and most liquid crypto asset in the marketplace subsequent to Bitcoin. As a part of the elevate, Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin joined SharpLink’s board of administrators. (Disclosure: Consensys is certainly one of 22 buyers in an editorially impartial Decrypt.)
Earlier than going all in on Ethereum, SharpLink had a market capitalization of round $2 million, buying and selling for simply over $2 per share and was simply weeks in the past dangerously near being delisted from the Nasdaq for falling under the $1 per share minimal. On Tuesday, every little thing modified: The corporate’s inventory jumped 420% to $35 per share, with a market cap above $23 million.
It’s a method harking back to, effectively, Technique. Michael Saylor’s firm, previously often known as MicroStrategy, laid down the blueprint for a way this works: you purchase up a bunch of Bitcoin (or, in Sharplink’s case, Ethereum), and your inventory capabilities as a proxy wager on the crypto asset. Shares in a crypto treasury firm will usually commerce at a premium to the digital property as a result of, for the common investor, it’s a lot simpler to purchase inventory than fiddle round with crypto immediately.
Earlier than being value $101.76 billion and amassing a Bitcoin treasure chest value over $60 billion, MicroStrategy was floundering at a double-digit share value as a reasonably common enterprise intelligence software program options firm. MicroStrategy then purchased $425 million in Bitcoin within the fall of 2020. The identical quantity in Ethereum that SharpLink plans to purchase. Again in 2020, MicroStrategy got here out of nowhere. Similar to SharpLink did Tuesday.
So what’s SharpLink, and the place did it come from?
What’s SharpLink Gaming?
SharpLink was co-founded in 2019 by now-CEO Rob Phythian and former COO Chris Nicholas, who left the corporate in 2024. Tori Roberts joined the group in 2021 as vice chairman, in control of internet affiliate marketing with Robert DeLucia following in 2022 as chief monetary officer.
In line with the official SharpLink website, there are additionally three impartial administrators in Leslie Bernhard, Robert Gutkowski, and Obie McKenzie that make up the board of administrators, chaired by Phythian himself.
Bernhard has beforehand served as a director and chairman in a number of Nasdaq-listed firms, Gutkowski helped seal a $486 million cable distribution deal, and McKenzie was a managing director at BlackRock. So, it seems not less than, the administrators are a succesful bunch.
Put merely, SharpLink Gaming makes use of know-how to assist match sports activities betting firms with followers. In line with its LinkedIn web page, the corporate now makes use of an AI device that collects and analyzes behavioral insights on customers, pushes related betting content material onto these customers, and converts them into paying prospects.
Buying and selling on the Nasdaq underneath the ticker SBET, it at the moment sits at a market cap of $55 million buying and selling at practically $80 per share, already doubling its value since Tuesday, in keeping with knowledge on Buying and selling View. For those who purchased SBET inventory 5 years in the past, although, you’re nonetheless down round 67%.
The corporate’s revenues declined 26.1% from 2023 to 2024, final 12 months’s monetary report confirmed, with money readily available reducing by 42.2% to $1.43 million. That stated, it noticed a constructive internet revenue of $10 million, a notable rise from a internet lack of $14.2 million.
In 2024, SharpLink Gaming offered two of its companies for $22.5 million, used most of those proceeds to write down off excellent money owed, and accomplished a home merger that modified the corporate from an Israeli LLC to a Delaware company, in keeping with an organization launch.
In July 2024, the board of administrators began a formal evaluate course of to “consider strategic options” that may “drive development and create and maximize worth” for stockholders. It seems that on this course of, the board of administrators began to contemplate cryptocurrency extra severely.
In February 2025, the corporate introduced that it acquired a ten% fairness stake in Armchair Enterprises Restricted, an organization that owns CryptoCasino.com, as a part of a method to develop into the “first Nasdaq-listed firm targeted on crypto gaming.”
“We rigorously evaluated greater than two dozen compelling alternatives,” SharpLink CEO Phythian stated in a launch, referencing the board’s evaluate course of. “And [we] decided that the mixture of market growth, price effectivity, safety and participant demand makes crypto gaming probably the most promising development alternatives within the on-line gaming business as we speak.”
However this preliminary crypto pivot wasn’t sufficient to forestall the worth of SBET inventory from dropping 60.8%, from $5.75 to $2.26, over the following two and a half months.
Throughout this era, SharpLink introduced a reverse inventory cut up to remain above Nasdaq’s inventory value minimal requirement of $1. After which a $4.5 million public inventory providing with the intention to regain “compliance with Nasdaq’s minimal requirement for complete stockholders’ fairness.”
Issues have been existential for SharpLink. However that was earlier than the Ethereum treasury technique led its inventory value to surge 420% on Tuesday to $35 a share—and now greater than doubling that.
Who’s the SharpLink CEO?
Rob Phythian co-founded SharpLink and as we speak serves as its CEO and chairman of the board of administrators. And now he’s the Ethereum Michael Saylor.
Pythian based SharpLink after he spent virtually 9 and a half years as CEO of SportsHub Applied sciences, an organization that created video games and apps for sports activities gaming websites. Previous to that, he’d additionally co-founded SportsData LLC, a sports activities expertise creator, and served as its CEO and president.
Throughout his time at SportsHub, he was named by a native enterprise publication as one of many high 100 individuals to know in Minnesota. Phythian was hailed a pioneer and a “sports activities tech godfather.”
One former enterprise companion informed Decrypt that he has nice respect for Pythian.
“I labored with Rob perhaps 10 or 15 years in the past on [an unnamed] talent gaming enterprise,” Matthew Warneford, CEO of Roblox sport creator Dubit, informed Decrypt. “Rob’s a fantastic man, very good, and good to work with. Don’t have anything however constructive issues to say.”
By 2023, now CEO of SharpLink, Phythian and his firm began to embrace synthetic intelligence. In a visitor weblog put up for Sportico, he outlined a future the place AI may assist personalize the game fan expertise, whereas additionally batting away considerations that AI outputs are too generic as he believed that the tide was turning.
A 12 months later, it was clear that the corporate wanted a brand new route, and Pythian led the corporate by its shift to crypto gaming.
And now he’s main SharpLink into its subsequent part because the Microstrategy of Ethereum. The query now could be: Will it work?
If Phythian follows Saylor’s playbook, then the following step will likely be to promote shares, or debt towards these shares, to purchase extra Ethereum. Then rise and repeat. That doubtless bodes effectively for ETH—and maybe even SBET shareholders. However what it means for SharpLink as a enterprise is an open query. It’s a raffle, however one which to date seems to be paying off.
