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Sharplink Gaming holds 868,000 ether as price drop drove $734 million loss in 2025

By Shaurya Malwa · Published March 10, 2026 · 5 min read · Source: CoinDesk
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Sharplink Gaming holds 868,000 ether as price drop drove $734 million loss in 2025

The Nasdaq-listed company raised $3.2 billion in 2025 to buy ether, doubled its ETH per share, but watched unrealized losses eat through the income statement as the token fell 45% from its peak.

By Shaurya Malwa|Edited by Stephen AlpherUpdated Mar 10, 2026, 1:54 p.m. Published Mar 10, 2026, 6:31 a.m. GoogleMake us preferred on Google
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What to know:

Sharplink wants to be a pure-play Ethereum treasury company, and the 2025 results show what that looks like when the asset drops by nearly half.

The Nasdaq-listed company reported full-year results Monday showing 868,699 ETH in total holdings as of March 1, $28.1 million in revenue, and a net loss of $734.6 million.

The loss was driven almost entirely by $616.2 million in unrealized losses on its ether position and a $140.2 million impairment charge on liquid staking tokens, partially offset by $55.2 million in realized gains from ether to staked ether conversions.

The unrealized losses don't mean Sharplink sold at a loss, however. They're a product of fair-value accounting rules that force public companies to mark crypto positions to market every quarter.

Sharplink still holds the same number of coins, but the income statement just reflects what happened to ether's price since they bought it.

Staking revenue climbed to $15.3 million in Q4, up nearly 50% from $10.3 million in Q3. The company generated 14,516 ETH in staking rewards since launch. Institutional ownership of the stock jumped from 6% to 46%.

Sharplink is the second-largest publicly traded holder of ether, behind Bitmine Immersion Technologies, which holds over 4.5 million ETH worth $9 billion and is sitting on estimated losses of $7.8 billion.

Bitmine ramped up its buying last week, purchasing 60,976 ETH in its largest weekly acquisition of 2026, with chairman Thomas Lee saying the firm believes crypto is in the "late stages of a mini-crypto winter."

The two companies are running the same playbook at different scales. Both raise capital through public markets to buy ether, measure success by ETH per share rather than GAAP earnings, and are betting that the unrealized losses eventually reverse as the cycle turns.

The ETH treasury thesis is more complex than its bitcoin equivalent. It requires investors to believe in Ethereum's role as an institutional settlement layer, the long-term growth of staking yields, and the value of the network's fee economy.

Staking gives Sharplink something bitcoin treasury companies don't have, a way to earn more of the underlying asset just by holding it, but it also introduces smart contract risk and liquidity risk on the liquid staking derivatives.

Meanwhile, Sharplink said it would continue compounding ETH per share, expanding staking operations, and deepening ecosystem partnerships.

ETH trades just above $2,000 in Asian afternoon hours on Tuesday, up 2.2% in the past 24 hours.

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