SharpLink Gaming aims to raise $1b from share sale to boost Ethereum Treasury
SharpLink Gaming plans to offer up to $1 billion worth of shares of common stock in order to buy Ethereum to boost its holdings, continuing its efforts to build an Ether treasury.
According to an SEC filing, the U.S.-based company plans to issue up to 72.05 million shares of common stocks. These stock will be marked under the symbol “SBET.” As much as 12.6 million shares in the offering will be valued at $79.21 per share, as per the reported sale price registered to Nasdaq on May 29.
However, the actual number of shares the company plans to issue will depend on how many they decide to sell and how much the price offering will be.
Within the document, SharpLink Gaming declared that it would use the entirety of funds generated from the stocks offering to buy Ethereum (ETH). The decision aligns with the firm’s earlier announcement back in May
“We intend to use substantially all of the proceeds from this offering to acquire Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain commonly referred to as “ETH,” wrote SharpLink Gaming in the filing.
If the company does manage to sell all their common shares, it would have enough money to buy $1 billion worth of ETH. Based on current market prices, the company could accumulate approximately 400,000 ETH. Many traders have pointed out how the company’s current strategy mirrors that of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin (BTC) holder.
At press time, Ethereum has gone down by 0.4% in the past 24 hours. It is currently trading hands at $2,484, with a market cap nearly reaching $300 billion.
Not long after the news broke, SharpLink’s stock plummeted as low as 24% in pre-market trading on June 2, declining from $76.70 to $58.15. This is a far cry from how the market reacted when the company announced it was going to raise $425 million in private placements to start an Ethereum treasury.
At the time, the company’s stock rose as high as 420% in pre-market trading, jumping from $6.72 to $34.75.
On May 27, SharpLink Gaming announced that it plans to adopt Ethereum as its main treasury asset, aiming to raise as much as $425 million through private placement in public equity to buy Ethereum. Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin was appointed Chairman of the company’s board after the deal closed.
Before SharpLink, there have been other companies that have made similar moves to establish an Ethereum treasury. However, the number of corporate Ethereum Treasury pales in comparison compared to the institutional demand for Bitcoin holdings. On May 19, French real estate firm Entreparticuliers announced that it would start accumulating ETH, effectively becoming an Ethereum Treasury company.
Similar to SharpLink, Entreparticuliers also saw a meteoric rise in its stocks following the news, soaring more than 800% five days after the announcement.
