SharpLink Gaming Invests $425 Million in Ethereum, Ether Futures Open Interest Hits $36.1 Billion

SharpLink Gaming, a Nasdaq-listed company, has made a significant move by establishing the first Ethereum (ETH) treasury, backed by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin. The company has invested $425 million to acquire approximately 120,000 ETH, mirroring MicroStrategy’s successful Bitcoin treasury strategy. This strategy involves leveraging stock and bond sales to acquire cryptocurrency, which has yielded substantial gains for MicroStrategy.

Eric Conner, a former Ethereum core developer and contributor, highlighted the bullish implications of SharpLink’s move. He noted that the acquisition of 120,000 ETH, likely to be staked, could lead to supply compression by removing tokens from circulation. This move provides a new narrative for ETH, positioning it as a digital reserve collateral and potentially driving its adoption on mainstream balance sheets through an equity wrapper like $SBET.

However, crypto analyst Victor cautioned against over-enthusiasm, outlining the risk of leveraging gains from an altcoin that is still down 19% in 2025. Despite this, the announcement triggered a surge in Ethereum futures market activity, with Ether futures open interest (OI) hitting a new all-time high of $36.1 billion, increasing $3.5 billion in 24 hours. Ether OI has increased by 72% over the past month, reflecting heightened trader activity.

Ether prices are also up 4.50% for the day, and Maartuun, a community analyst at CryptoQuant, indicated the likelihood of a leveraged-fueled pump for the altcoin. Over the past 30 days, Ether prices have gained 48%, with the markets exhibiting 10 leverage-driven pump signals. The majority of these rallies—eight out of ten—resulted in negative returns, while one rally triggered a short squeeze, driving prices higher, and another displayed neutral price action.

From a technical perspective, Ether’s price action on the daily chart posted a descending triangle, a bullish breakout pattern, which creates equal highs and higher lows, converging toward an imminent rally. The pattern is bordered by two trendlines, the upper resistance, currently around $2,700 and the ascending support line. A bullish breakout above $2,677 targets the pattern’s measured move, calculated by adding the triangle’s height to the breakout point. This projects a target range of $3,100–$3,200, aligning with prior resistance levels around $3,100 and $3,400.

The relative strength index (RSI) at 68.50 supports this bullish outlook. An RSI near 70 indicates strong momentum, with the indicator resetting after oscillating in the overbought region (above 70), suggesting the altcoin could be gearing up for a fresh rally. Anonymous crypto trader mo_xbt pointed out a “sandwich setup” for Ethereum. The analyst also believed that a $3,000 retest was imminent and said, “Gotta love the sandwich set up on the daily — Above 1d 200ema, below 1d 200ma & 300ma. I have seen this set up many times the last month, it always lead up.”