Meet SharpLink: The MicroStrategy of Ethereum – Decrypt

How do you save an ailing publicly traded firm in 2025? One reply, and an more and more widespread one at that, is: pivot to crypto—or extra particularly, turn 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 increase, Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin joined SharpLink’s board of administrators. (Disclosure: Consensys is considered one of 22 traders 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 beneath the $1 per share minimal. On Tuesday, every part modified: The corporate’s inventory jumped 420% to $35 per share, with a market cap above $23 million.

It’s a technique harking back to, effectively, Technique. Michael Saylor’s firm, previously referred to as MicroStrategy, laid down the blueprint for the 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 typical investor, it’s a lot simpler to purchase inventory than fiddle round with crypto straight.

Earlier than being price $101.76 billion and amassing a Bitcoin treasure chest price over $60 billion, MicroStrategy was floundering at a double-digit share worth 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. Identical 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 crew in 2021 as vice chairman, accountable for online marketing with Robert DeLucia following in 2022 as chief monetary officer.

In response to 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 corporations, Gutkowski helped seal a $486 million cable distribution deal, and McKenzie was a managing director at BlackRock. So, it seems at the least, the administrators are a succesful bunch.

Put merely, SharpLink Gaming makes use of expertise to assist match sports activities betting corporations with followers. In response to its LinkedIn web page, the corporate now makes use of an AI software 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 below the ticker SBET, it at the moment sits at a market cap of $55 million buying and selling at almost $80 per share, already doubling its worth since Tuesday, in keeping with information 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 yr’s monetary report confirmed, with money readily available reducing by 42.2% to $1.43 million. That mentioned, it noticed a optimistic internet earnings of $10 million, a notable rise from a internet lack of $14.2 million.

In 2024, SharpLink Gaming bought two of its companies for $22.5 million, used most of those proceeds to put in writing 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 overview course of to “consider strategic options” that may “drive progress and create and maximize worth” for stockholders. It seems that on this course of, the board of administrators began to contemplate cryptocurrency extra critically. 

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 technique to turn into the “first Nasdaq-listed firm centered on crypto gaming.”

“We fastidiously evaluated greater than two dozen compelling alternatives,” SharpLink CEO Phythian mentioned in a launch, referencing the board’s overview course of. “And [we] decided that the mix of market enlargement, price effectivity, safety and participant demand makes crypto gaming one of the crucial promising progress alternatives within the on-line gaming business at this time.”

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 subsequent two and a half months. 

Throughout this era, SharpLink introduced a reverse inventory cut up to remain above Nasdaq’s inventory worth minimal requirement of $1. After which a $4.5 million public inventory providing in an effort 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 worth 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 at this time 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 prime 100 folks to know in Minnesota. Phythian was hailed a pioneer and a “sports activities tech godfather.”

One former enterprise associate informed Decrypt that he has nice respect for Pythian.

“I labored with Rob possibly 10 or 15 years in the past on [an unnamed] ability 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 optimistic issues to say.”

By 2023, now CEO of SharpLink, Phythian and his firm began to embrace synthetic intelligence. In a visitor weblog publish 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 yr later, it was clear that the corporate wanted a brand new course, and Pythian led the corporate by its shift to crypto gaming. 

And now he’s main SharpLink into its subsequent section because the Microstrategy of Ethereum. The query now could be: Will it work?

If Phythian follows Saylor’s playbook, then the subsequent step will likely be to promote shares, or debt towards these shares, to purchase extra Ethereum. Then rise and repeat. That probably 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 bet, however one which thus far seems to be paying off.