New Trends in Corporate Financial Strategy: Ethereum Enters Company Balance Sheets Following Bitcoin

Not just Bitcoin (BTC), an increasing number of companies are incorporating Ethereum (ETH) into their financial statements, hoping to obtain the long-term value of Decentralized Finance and Blockchain infrastructure by holding ETH. Companies like BitMine and SharpLink are increasing their positions, and some companies are even closing all positions in Bitcoin to hold ETH, reflecting their confidence in Ethereum's positioning as a "technical underlying asset."

Major CEX in the US hold hundreds of millions of USD in ETH The parent company of the major US cryptocurrency exchange currently holds over $440 million in ETH. As early as 2021, this CEX announced on its official blog that it became the first publicly traded company to include cryptocurrencies such as ETH in its financial statements, stating that "more and more companies will hold crypto assets in the future."

BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) is another company heavily invested in Ethereum. The company is chaired by Tom Lee of Fundstrat and recently announced that its ETH holdings have exceeded $1 billion, approximately 300,000 coins. BitMine went public on June 5 and has clearly positioned itself as a "pure investment vehicle for Ethereum," viewing ETH as the core infrastructure for the integration of financial services and Blockchain.

Small and medium-sized enterprises take the lead, and the capital market responds actively In addition to BitMine, companies like SharpLink Gaming (SBET), BTCS (BTCS), and Bit Digital (BTBT) have also adopted similar strategies by purchasing Ether through stock issuance or fundraising.

For example, BTBT announced earlier this month that it has converted all of its corporate funds from Bitcoin to Ether. CEO Sam Tabar stated, "We believe that Ethereum has the potential to rewrite the entire financial system." Since the beginning of the year, the company's stock price has risen by 17%.

Affected by the investment from the Peter Thiel Foundation, BitMine's stock price soared by 25% in one day last Monday. The stock prices of SharpLink and BTCS have also risen nearly 200% in the past month.

Ethereum's "Killer Applications": Tokenization and DeFi Infrastructure Ethereum currently dominates over 51% of the blockchain market share, as it enables direct transactions without banks, smart contract deployment, and token creation, and is regarded as the infrastructure for DeFi and Web3.

Ray Youssef, the CEO of the crypto market platform NoOnes, pointed out, "Ethereum allows any project, company, or individual to create tokens and incentivize the community, which is its killer application." He even stated, "Its utility may be stronger than Bitcoin."

Regulatory Boost: The GENIUS Act Enhances Confidence in the ETH Ecosystem The GENIUS Act recently signed by President Trump has become a catalyst for the rise of Ethereum, as the act will regulate stablecoins backed by USD and short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. The stock price of Circle, the company that issues the USDC stablecoin, has surged 600% since its IPO on June 5.

Ethereum, as the underlying network for mainstream stablecoins like USDC, has therefore benefited immensely. Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani stated, "Any company that uses stablecoin technology needs to pay transaction fees for the Ethereum network."

Strategic Divergence: Saylor Claims Strategy Prioritizes Bitcoin Nevertheless, not all companies view Ethereum as a strategic asset. Michael Saylor, the Executive Chairman of Strategy, known as the "biggest Bitcoin believer," reaffirmed his stance: "We are 150% Bitcoiners; we only do Bitcoin, and anything other than Bitcoin is just more Bitcoin."

Fundstrat's Head of Digital Asset Strategy, Sean Farrell, added that corporate investment in Ethereum does not mean ETH is replacing BTC, but rather represents a "lateral expansion strategy" aimed at capturing the trend of tokenization of real assets on the blockchain.

Conclusion Corporate financial strategies are gradually diversifying, expanding from a single Bitcoin to highly practical blockchain assets like Ethereum. Although ETH has yet to replace BTC's core position in corporate investment portfolios, its applications in stablecoins, DeFi, and tokenization are making it a new option for corporate crypto asset allocation. Crypto users should closely monitor the flow of institutional funds to gain insights into the next asset preference trend.