Ethereum (ETH) is up 4% on Tuesday following Sharplink Gaming's plan to raise $425 million in a private placement, led by Consensys, to purchase ETH as its primary treasury reserve asset.
Sharplink Gaming is set to incorporate Ether as its reserve asset, according to a press release on Tuesday. The firm announced it has entered a private investment in public equity (PIPE) agreement for the issuance and sale of 69.1 million of its shares to investors.
Consensys will function as the lead investor for the sales offering, with venture capital firms such as Pantera Capital, ParaFi Capital, Galaxy Digital and Ondo also participating. The sale is expected to generate proceeds of $425 million, which Sharplink intends to use in purchasing Ether as part of its new treasury strategy.
The ETH treasury will take effect upon the closing of the private placement on Thursday, after which Consensys CEO and co-founder of Ethereum Joseph Lubin will join Sharplink's Board of Directors as Chairman.
"On close, Consensys looks forward to partnering with SharpLink to explore and develop an Ethereum Treasury Strategy and to work with them in their core business as a strategic advisor," said Lubin in the press release.
Notably, Sharplink is not the first company to adopt an Ethereum treasury plan. Healthcare firm BioNexus Gene Lab (BGLC) announced in March that it would be adding ETH as its treasury asset. Nasdaq-listed blockchain-based firm BTCS also announced it purchased $8.42 million worth of ETH last week, boosting its total holdings to 12,500 ETH.
The development comes as more corporate firms are veering towards a digital asset treasury strategy, particularly for Bitcoin (BTC) and Solana (SOL).
These tokens have seen increased institutional exposure in the past few months, with companies like Strategy and DeFi Development Corp consistently purchasing BTC and SOL, thereby boosting their market demand. As a result, both tokens largely outperformed ETH in the past year.
However, ETH's status quo could be set for a boost with Sharplink's $425 million buying pressure.
Additionally, Etherealize, co-founded by Vivek Raman, is working to demonstrate the advantages of the Ethereum ecosystem to traditional finance institutions, ETF issuers and the public. The company prioritizes developing tools that promote the application of Ethereum in financial markets, with a focus on tokenization and secure asset trading.
Ethereum experienced $68.43 million in futures liquidations over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data. The total amount of long and short liquidations is $22.53 million and $45.89 million, respectively.
Since recovering the lower boundary of a symmetrical triangle on the weekly chart, ETH has struggled near the resistance range between $2,750 and $2,850, a key level where bears have historically mounted selling pressure.
ETH/USDT weekly chart
If ETH can sustain a high-volume bullish move to flip $2,850 into a support level, it could rally to test the symmetrical triangle's upper boundary. However, it first has to clear the $3,250 resistance to pull off such a move.
On the downside, ETH could find support near the $2,500 level or the lower boundary of the triangle. A decline below this level could bring the support range between $2,250 and $2,100 into focus.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram bars are above their neutral levels, indicating dominant bullish momentum. Meanwhile, the Stochastic Oscillator (Stoch) has slightly tilted into its overbought region, signaling rising chances of a short-term pullback.