Public Keys: Big ETH Stakes, AI Boost for Bitcoin Miners and 24/7 Trading

Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt, that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.

Sharpening the Stake

Ethereum treasury firm SharpLink Gaming is planning to stake a portion of its $3.6 billion ETH stash on the Linea network once it hits mainnet.

The company had been staking almost all of its holdings through its custodians, Anchorage and Coinbase. But now it’s eyeing higher-yield opportunities.

“When you hold billions of dollars of ETH and you’re looking at a portfolio of staking, there is going to be an ability to deploy that through staking opportunities on Linea,” SharpLink co-CEO Joseph Chalom told Decrypt. “And that is really, really important, not only to Consensys, but to the Linea Consortium. And if there are opportunities that SharpLink can avail itself of to get better yield, higher risk-adjusted yield through the Linea network, we will do that.”

There’s been an awful lot of interest in staking and becoming Ethereum validators. The line to become a validator has a wait time of more than 16 days, according to Validator Queue.

An Ethereum ICO whale awakened recently and moved $645 million worth of ETH into a staking wallet this morning—although they still hold $1.1 billion worth of funds.

The news about staking ETH hasn’t exactly been great for SharpLink’s share price, though. SBET has lost 4% and shares are currently trading for $14.81. That’s nearly a 20% drop since the start of the week.

What business hours?

SEC and CFTC leaders  on Friday said they’re considering “24/7 markets” to match the cadence of the digital assets market.

“Further expanding trading hours could better align U.S. markets with the evolving reality of a global, always-on economy,” SEC chair Paul Atkins and CFTC acting chair Caroline Pham said in a joint statement on Friday.

But the chairs added the caveat that around the clock trading might not be a good fit for all asset types.

If the change comes to pass, the Trump administration will have left another mark on financial markets.

The chairs said the proposals all align with a report released in July by the Trump administration directing the agencies to loosen numerous U.S. restrictions on crypto trading..

It’s an ironic twist 10 years after Wall Street firms had to ban interns from pulling all nighters.

Bitcoin miners get an AI boost

According to JP Morgan analysts, publicly traded Bitcoin miners have AI to thank for a new record-high market cap set last month.

Their combined market cap soared to $39 billion as firms leaned into their high-performance computer pivots, which primarily serve AI firms’ voracious appetite for compute power.

Last year’s Bitcoin halving and soaring hashrates have relentlessly cut into margins, but thankfully there’s lots of demand in the GPU farms.

JP Morgan tracks 13 U.S.-listed miners, including Iris Energy, Hut 8, Core Scientific, Marathon, and Riot. The list also includes TeraWulf, whose stock rose a staggering 83% after the company upsized its colocation and AI hosting deal with Fluidstack.

This is less a scrabble for profits and more a sign of carefully laid plans panning out. Plenty of miners have been planning these pivots for years.

Other Keys

• Strategy drops $450M on Bitcoin: It’s hardly surprising when Strategy buys more Bitcoin. This one kept its streak alive the same week its stock earn a reiterated Buy rating from Benchmark.
• Back in custody: U.S. Bank has revived its Bitcoin custody service. The $60 billion market cap lender has revived the program after a years-long pause as demand for institutional grade custodians swells.
• Metaplanet shareholder crunch: Shareholders of the Japanese Bitcoin treasury firm approved an $884 million capital raise as the company struggles to raise cash. An analyst told Decrypt he expects the firm to keep its BTC buying pace, even if Bitcoin dives this month.