Ethereum becomes the new corporate reserve: how companies' balance sheets are changing the marketplace

Large companies are crowded into bonds and deposits when real rates are squeezed to zero. In search of yield, they are turning their attention to Ethereum. In the spring, several public issuers shifted from test purchases to a full-fledged Ethereum treasury strategy, withdrawing millions of tokens from circulation. For the second most capitalized coin, this is the largest institutional shift since the launch of staking.

The pioneer was BitMine Immersion Technologies. The firm announced a $250 million purchase of ether in June, but by July the volume had surpassed $1 billion. The company's valuation grew nearly fivefold, and Peter Thiel and Cathie Wood joined the list of shareholders. In parallel, The Ether Machine is preparing a SPAC merger with Dynamix Corporation to manage over 400,000 ETH and earn double-digit returns on staking and arbitrage commissions.

Following in their footsteps are SharpLink Gaming, Bit Digital and GameSquare, each holding over $100 million in ETH. BitMine board chairman Tom Lee aims to accumulate and secure 5% of the network's total supply. The logic is simple: issue bonds, raise cheap funding and instantly buy a digital asset. As long as the debt market remains saturated with liquidity, the scheme accelerates capitalization while reducing operational risk.

Legislative changes add fuel. The GENIUS Act passed solidified the status of stablecoins, and they are largely traded on the Ethereum blockchain. Each new hundred million tokenized dollars increases demand for ether to pay for gas and support liquidity. After the network upgrade, net issuance went into negative territory, so the additional demand quickly creates a deficit that cannot be covered by increased issuance.

The corporate demand for Ethereum is qualitatively different from the bitcoin model. Whereas BTC serves as digital gold, ETH is both settlement fuel and the underlying raw material for DeFi, stablecoins, and bond tokenization. Therefore, companies do not simply store coins, but actively manage them: they move tokens between validators, liquid pools and derivatives platforms, turning a static reserve into a source of cachet.

Skeptics emphasize that excessive optimism could be replaced by a correction if corporate purchases take a pause. However, the mechanics of the market are on the side of the bulls: the volume of ETH being flushed out by ETF funds and treasury structures is seven times the net supply, and the share of stacked coins is approaching 28%. Even the limited flow of new capital pushes the price up, because there is simply nothing left to sell on the exchanges.

Stock analysts see corporate ether increasing return on capital and reducing sensitivity to interest rate fluctuations. If current liquidity is maintained, pressure from below can quickly turn the strategy of individual pioneers into an industry standard that can fundamentally change the structure of balance sheets in the public market.