Esports Firm’s Stock Price Doubles After Bitcoin, Ethereum Treasury Investment

Allied Gaming & Entertainment, a Nasdaq-listed esports and gaming company, announced that it has invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum as part of a new “corporate treasury management strategy.”

In response, its stock, traded under the ticker AGAE, soared 105% to $1.87 earlier Friday and has since dipped to $1.65, according to TradingView—still up 71% on the day.

The company explained that this was just the “first step” to incorporating crypto into its balance sheet, as it plans for a broader embrace of the blockchain and teased real-world asset initiatives.

The exact figure of its Bitcoin and Ethereum investment was not stated in the release. Decrypt reached out to confirm the details, but did not immediately receive a response.

“We see cryptocurrency not only as a store of value, but also as a strategic building block for the future of our business,” Yangyang James Li, CEO of AGAE, said in a statement. “Integrating blockchain and digital assets into our ecosystem is a natural progression of our vision to connect people through gaming, entertainment, and innovative financial technologies.”

Allied Gaming & Entertainment is a company focused primarily on entertainment in the esports gaming scene. It owns and operates the HyperX Esports Arena, a 650-person capacity venue in Las Vegas that has hosted events like the 2019 League of Legends All-Stars match, as well as an event for Ethereum-based card battler Parallel just last year.

It went public in 2017, debuting at $9.54 and hitting an all-time high of $12.11 in October 2018, according to TradingView. Since then, the stock has been on a gradual downward grind. However, its latest crypto announcement has given it a much-needed boost, momentarily doubling its value.

Future initiatives for the esports company will include allowing for crypto payments, creating tokenization models for IP monetization, as well as integrating stablecoins and utility tokens within the “company’s digital ecosystem,” the release said.

The announcement is just the latest addition to the flood of publicly traded crypto treasury companies emerging in the U.S.

It first started with Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy, now just Strategy, which pivoted from being a business intelligence software company to focus on acquiring Bitcoin. It now holds 638,460 BTC, or $73.6 billion worth of Bitcoin, and Saylor says it could acquire as much as 7% of the total supply.

Strategy’s raging success in the markets since its crypto pivot has led many others to follow suit.

Notably, SharpLink Gaming and BitMine Immersion Technologies have emerged as the leading Ethereum treasury companies, with BMNR holding $9.4 billion worth of ETH and SBET amassing $3.8 billion of ETH, per data from Strategic ETH Reserve—totalling 2.4% of the Ethereum supply between them.

It’s not just the big hitters, though. Crypto treasury companies also exist for Elon Musk’s favorite meme coin Dogecoin, Solana meme coin BONK, and altcoins Solana, XRP, and Sui.

The trend has led some industry observers to grow concerned that it could be the black swan event that drags crypto down this cycle, akin to the FTX collapse of the past. 

However, SharpLink Gaming’s co-CEO, Joseph Chalom, told Decrypt last week “absolutely not.” Rather, he said, the Ethereum treasury push will be a positive “white swan” event by educating institutional investors about the cryptocurrency.