Chalom: Ethereum Is Wall Street’s Financial Backbone
Joseph Chalom, co-CEO of Sharplink and former head of digital assets at BlackRock, views Ethereum as the essential infrastructure for Wall Street’s shift to digital finance. He highlights Ethereum’s trust, security and deep liquidity, along with its dominance in stablecoins and tokenized assets.
At Sharplink, Chalom is staking over $3 billion in ETH and exploring restaking with partners such as Consensys, Linea and EigenLayer to unlock additional yield. All assets remain with regulated custodians, offering institutional-grade DeFi returns without DeFi-level risk.
Unlike Bitcoin’s role as a store of value, Ethereum functions as a productive asset. Its proof-of-stake consensus delivers around 3% annual yield, which Chalom says can be returned to shareholders and reinvested to rebuild financial rails faster and cheaper.
Chalom warns many digital treasuries lack the balance sheets and trading volume to scale effectively. He predicts that, over time, finance will merge DeFi and TradFi, with Ethereum underpinning all future financial services.
Bullish
This announcement from a former BlackRock executive underscores growing institutional confidence in Ethereum. Chalom’s multi-billion-dollar staking operations and restaking strategies signal substantial capital inflows, which historically have driven positive price performance. The emphasis on regulated custodians and institutional-grade returns reduces perceived risk and may attract further large-scale investors. In the short term, this endorsement can boost market sentiment and trading volumes around ETH. Over the long term, as more institutions adopt proof-of-stake staking and tokenization on Ethereum, network demand will rise, strengthening ETH’s value proposition. Similar past endorsements—from major asset managers and financial firms—have correlated with bullish rallies in ETH.