SharpLink Plans to Buy 120,000 ETH With $425M Raise Led by Consensys

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🧾 ETH gets first Nasdaq treasury backer

• 🚨 Trump Media goes full Bitcoin after denial

• 🧠 Cetus users may be made whole

• 📱 StarkWare’s speedy new ZK prover

• 🎙️ New podcast: Should we care about REV?

Consensys Leads $425M Raise for SharpLink Gaming’s ETH Treasury Plans

SharpLink Gaming is raising $425 million via a private placement to establish ether as its primary treasury reserve asset, marking a major shift for a publicly traded U.S. company that operates as a sports betting firm as it follows the playbook of Michael Saylor’s Strategy and other firms that have emulated it.

The deal is being led by Consensys Software, headed by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, who will become SharpLink's board chair upon closing. 

Other major crypto investors, including Pantera Capital and Electric Capital, also participated in the raise.

SharpLink, which trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker SBET, saw its stock price soar more than 400% after the news.

The proceeds will be used to acquire around 120,000 ETH, potentially making the firm a “public ETH proxy” and marking the first time a Nasdaq-listed company has established an ETH treasury.

ETH rallied 8% to an intraday high of $2,700 on Tuesday afternoon ET before settling lower at around $2,635 as of 2:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

Trump Media Confirms $2.5B Capital Raise to Buy Bitcoin

Trump Media & Technology Group, the Trump family-controlled company behind Truth Social, has confirmed it will raise $2.5 billion to invest in bitcoin, reversing a blunt denial of a Financial Times report that it was set to embark on a multibillion-dollar capital raise for crypto investment.

The company’s unapologetic about-face comes only a day after it lashed out at the FT, which it accused of having “dumb writers listening to even dumber sources.”

Trump Media and Technology’s Nasdaq-listed stock fell more than 12.5% in just five minutes in early trading on Tuesday following the news, and extended the slump to over 15% later in the trading session before clawing back some of those losses in after-market trade to end Tuesday almost 12% lower. 

The firm said it would raise $1.5 billion through a private placement of common stock, and that another $1 billion would come from convertible senior zero coupon secured bonds. 

Around 50 institutional investors are participating in the funding round, which is expected to close on or around May 29.

The funds will be used to create a dedicated Bitcoin treasury, making Trump Media & Technology one of the biggest public corporate holders of bitcoin. The holdings will be managed by Anchorage Digital and Crypto.com.

“We view Bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom, and now Trump Media will hold cryptocurrency as a crucial part of our assets,” Trump Media CEO and former congressman Devin Nunes said.

The move by Trump Media & Technology is just one among a number of bitcoin accumulation initiatives as companies follow the trail blazed by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which has made huge investments in the original cryptocurrency.

Cetus Proposes Onchain Vote to Return All Funds Lost in Exploit

After Sui-based decentralized exchange Cetus suffered a $220 million exploit last week, it has now proposed a community vote to potentially return 100% of the frozen funds to affected users.

The protocol’s team proposed returning the funds using its cash and token treasuries, alongside a critical loan from the Sui Foundation, provided that the community approves the return of the locked funds via an upcoming onchain vote.

Validators and SUI stakers have been encouraged to participate, with the team promising to begin recovery efforts regardless of the vote’s outcome. 

The proposal has, however, sparked debate within the Sui community about the balance between decentralization and user protection, with some arguing that such an intervention could undermine the network’s decentralized ethos.

StarkWare Launches Mobile-Optimized ZK Prover

StarkWare, a blockchain infrastructure company focused on zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, has unveiled STARK Two (S-two), a next-generation, mobile-optimized ZK prover that enables users to generate cryptographic proofs directly on their devices.

Those devices include smartphones and laptops, and web browsers can also be used, without any need to rely on centralized servers or cloud infrastructure.

The StarkWare team said that benchmark tests had shown that S-two was up to 39 times faster than previous products, such as Succinct’s SP1, and 28 times faster than Risc Zero’s R0VM for certain workloads.

“S-two outperforms every other prover on the market — across a wide range of real-world use cases,” the team said. “Whether you’re working on Bitcoin, Ethereum, AI, zkML, or in need of recursive proofs — S-two delivers faster performance.”

The release comes over a year after StarkWare announced it was building S-two at ETH Denver, noting that the code would be open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license.

Does High REV Signal a Blockchain’s Strength or Its User Exploitation?

Is REV a breakthrough metric for valuing blockchains or just a distraction from what really matters? Tom Dunleavy and Austin Federa discuss.

A debate has been heating up on crypto Twitter about real economic value (REV), a metric meant to measure the value that blockchains accrue from user activity. 

REV includes transaction fees and maximal extractable value (MEV) tips, but excludes issuance — the inflationary rewards paid to validators. Some say it’s the clearest window into genuine usage. Others argue it’s a flawed and misleading proxy.

So we brought the argument to Unchained. Tom Dunleavy, head of venture at Varys Capital, says fees are headed to zero, and that blockchains shouldn’t be valued like companies. Meanwhile, Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero, believes REV offers real visibility into activity, maturity, and demand.

The conversation covers:

• Whether REV is a meaningful metric (and how to game it)

• Whether L2 tokens are fundamentally broken

• What happens to security when fees (and MEV) go to zero

• Whether high REV signals product-market fit or just economic noise

• How to value blockchains, if not with REV

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

• 🔒 Michael Saylor rejected onchain proof-of-reserves for Strategy, describing it as a security liability that exposed wallet addresses and ignored liabilities, arguing that audited financials with verified assets and debts were the institutional standard.

• 🏦 Cantor Fitzgerald initiated a $2 billion bitcoin-backed lending program by financing FalconX and Maple Finance, signaling renewed momentum in the $36.5 billion crypto lending sector, which has rebounded from its 2023 lows.

• 📊 Circle aims to raise $600 million via its IPO at a valuation exceeding $5.4 billion, offering 24 million shares — 9.6 million from the company and 14.4 million from existing holders — after shutting down rumors about its potential acquisition by Coinbase or Ripple.

• 🛰️ Cobie’s Echo launched an initial coin offering platform named Sonar, with its first project, Plasma, selling 1 billion XPL tokens — 10% of supply — at $0.05 each to raise $50 million, giving the token a fully diluted valuation of $500 million and requiring stablecoin deposits with lockups varying by jurisdiction.

• 🚨 French police have arrested 12 suspects, including minors, linked to crypto-related kidnappings in which victims were abducted and tortured for ransom in bitcoin, with one high-profile case involving the severing of a hostage’s finger.

• 🏙️ A third suspect surrendered in New York on Tuesday in a case involving the alleged kidnapping and prolonged torture of Italian crypto investor Michael Carturan, who was reportedly savagely assaulted and suspended from a Manhattan townhouse roof to extract access to his bitcoin.

• ⛔ The International Monetary Fund says it will enforce limits on El Salvador’s bitcoin holdings as part of a $1.4 billion loan deal, directly clashing with authoritarian President Nayib Bukele’s pledge to keep growing the country’s BTC stash despite sitting on more than $357 million of unrealized profit.

• ⚡ Strive Asset Management raised $750 million through a private investment in public equity deal at a 121% premium to ASST’s previous share price to fuel a bitcoin-focused strategy targeting distressed claims and discounted crypto credit, with the potential to expand the raise to $1.5 billion.

1. Capriole: Market Update #63

2. Bloomberg: Wall Street Can’t Beat Michael Saylor’s Runaway Crypto Engine