The corporate Ether acquisition race is accelerating as the world’s two largest Ether treasury firms are raising capital to acquire more of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, which is nearing its previous all-time high.
Public Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm BitMine Immersion Technology is looking to raise $24.5 billion through a new at-the-market (ATM) stock sale offering to acquire more Ether (ETH) tokens, according to a Tuesday US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
BitMine’s offering comes the same day as corporate crypto treasury firm SharpLink completed a $389 million capital raise from common stock shares sold for select institutional investors, according to another SEC filing. “We intend to contribute substantially all of the cash proceeds that we receive to acquire ETH,” the filing said.
Part of the $389 million net proceeds will also be used for “working capital needs, general corporate purposes, operating expenses, and core affiliate marketing operations,” SharpLink said.
SharpLink has raised about $1.4 billion in gross proceeds to date from more than 71.5 million shares sold, the filing shows.
Bitmine is the world’s largest corporate holder of Ether with 1.2 billion ETH worth $5 billion on its books, followed by SharpLink with 598,000 Ether worth $2.64 billion, data from StrategicEthReserve shows.
BitMine previously announced plans to acquire up to 5% of Ether’s supply.
Related: Corporate crypto treasury holdings top $100B as Ether buying accelerates
Ether nears all-time high amid growing corporate adoption
Corporations and publicly traded firms are increasingly adopting Ether as a secondary treasury reserve asset, which saw the Ether price rise over 21% during the past week, to trade at $4,408 at the time of writing.
Ether is now trading 9% below its old all-time high of 4,890 recorded in November 2021, Cointelegraph data shows.
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“Wall Street firms and the broader TradFi world are just warming up to the idea of Ethereum as a treasury reserve asset,” Gracy Chen, CEO of crypto exchange Bitget, told Cointelegraph.
Growing interest in real-world asset tokenization has reignited a renewed interest in Ether as a secondary reserve asset next to Bitcoin, added Chen.
This dynamic may see Ethereum-focused treasury firms amass up to 10% of the total Ether supply in the long term, up from holding just 1% on July 29, Standard Chartered has predicted.
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