The last three months in crypto have brought a new wave of public companies pursuing crypto treasury strategies with ether – and they're not likely to slow down anytime soon, according to Standard Chartered. The trend has emerged as positive regulatory momentum has boosted interest by institutions and brands alike in stablecoins and tokenization of traditional assets – activity largely powered by the Ethereum network – which has been driven by positive regulatory momentum for the crypto industry. Since the start of June, ether accumulators have purchased 1% of the coin in circulation. In a note Tuesday, Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick pointed out that that's double the pace of bitcoin buying by corporate treasuries – and that the trend is just getting started. "ETH corporate treasuries can capture both staking rewards and decentralized finance (DeFi) leverage opportunities, which U.S. Ethereum ETFs currently cannot," he said. "As such, we think ETH treasury companies have even more growth potential than BTC ones from a regulatory arbitrage perspective. We think they may eventually end up owning 10% of all ETH, a 10x increase from current holdings." If the flows into treasury companies continue, he added, ether could break $4,000 – historically a challenging level for investors psychologically and technically – by the end of the year. The largest of these companies, Bitmine Immersion Technologies , holds 0.5% of the ether in circulation and has a goal of increasing its holdings to 5%, Kendrick noted, and it's likely other entrants will also join this cohort. "In the Bitcoin treasury space, it took several years for MSTR to spawn significant buying by imitators. For ETH this is likely to happen more quickly, as the broader concept of corporate holdings of digital assets is already accepted," he said. "If BMNR can achieve its goal of increasing its ETH holdings to 5% of the total in circulation, then it is fair to assume that ETH treasury companies as a whole will end up holding more than 10% of all ETH in circulation," he added. "This would be a 10x increase from today's corporate treasury holdings." SharpLink Gaming , whose board is chaired by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, was one of the first to make the move. Bit Digital in June exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans. Most recently, The Ether Machine revealed plans to go public later this year through a SPAC with Dynamix . —CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
