Joseph Chalom spent roughly 20 years inside BlackRock, the largest asset manager on the planet, helping architect the exact products that pulled institutional money into crypto. In July 2025 he walked away to run a company built on a contrarian bet. As co-CEO of SharpLink, an Ethereum-treasury firm that now holds more than $1.3 billion in ETH and stakes nearly all of it, he has become the most articulate institutional voice arguing that Ethereum, not Bitcoin, is the better asset to hold on a corporate balance sheet.
That argument stopped being theoretical this month. Chalom took the stage at the Injective Summit in Washington DC on July 16, 2026, at a moment when large holders are accumulating and staking ETH at scale and the corporate-treasury bid has become a real source of demand for both coins. When one of the people who literally built BlackRock's crypto onramp says the flows should tilt toward ETH, traders on both sides of the Ethereum-versus-Bitcoin trade have a reason to listen.
Here is who Chalom is, the precise case he makes for ETH over BTC, and the honest argument against it.
Who Is Joseph Chalom and What He Built at BlackRock
Chalom is not a crypto-native founder who wandered in during a bull market. He is a two-decade BlackRock veteran who sat close to the center of the firm's digital-asset push, and the products he helped shape are the reason "institutional crypto" is a phrase anyone uses today.
Three of them define his record. He was central to IBIT, BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF that now holds more than $87 billion in assets and ranks as the most-traded product of its kind. He worked on ETHA, the firm's spot Ether ETF, which has crossed $10 billion. And he helped bring BUIDL to life, the first tokenized US Treasury fund issued on Ethereum.
That last one matters more than the headline suggests. BUIDL put real US government debt on a public blockchain, and it chose Ethereum to do it. The man who helped ship it now runs a company that treats ETH as a reserve asset. His resume is the argument, before he says a word.
From BlackRock to a $1.3 Billion Ethereum Treasury
SharpLink is a publicly traded company that pivoted into an Ethereum-treasury strategy, and its balance sheet is where Chalom's thesis lives in dollars rather than slides. The firm holds more than $1.3 billion in ETH and stakes nearly all of it, which means the reserve is not sitting idle. It is producing a native yield while it sits.
The board reads like a signal in itself. Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and co-founder of Consensys, sits on it. When the person who helped launch the network is governing the company that treats its token as a treasury asset, the strategy is not a marketing experiment bolted onto a gaming shell. It is a deliberate bet on ETH as productive corporate money.
Chalom does not soften the position for a mixed audience. He makes the case for ETH over BTC directly, which is unusual, because most institutional voices hedge. He came out of the firm that owns the largest Bitcoin ETF in the world, and he still argues the treasury flows should favor Ethereum. That is worth understanding on its own terms.
The Case for ETH Over BTC as a Treasury Asset
Chalom's argument rests on three claims, and they are stronger together than any one is alone.
ETH is a productive asset and Bitcoin is not. You can stake ETH to earn a native yield of roughly 3% annually, so a treasury that stakes its holdings is earning a return on its reserve instead of just holding it. Bitcoin has no equivalent. It sits on the balance sheet and waits for price to move. To a corporate treasurer used to reserves that generate income, an asset that pays you to hold it is a different category from one that does not.
ETH is the settlement layer the tokenization wave runs on. Stablecoins, tokenized Treasuries, and most of DeFisettle on Ethereum. Owning ETH is owning a piece of the infrastructure that the whole institutional-tokenization story depends on, the same infrastructure Chalom helped BlackRock plug into with BUIDL. If stablecoins and real-world assets keep migrating on-chain, demand for the block space they consume flows back to the token that secures it.
Staking and treasuries shrink the liquid float. As more ETH gets locked into staking contracts and corporate reserves, the freely trading supply gets thinner. That is a supply dynamic Bitcoin's model does not share in the same way, because Bitcoin's scarcity comes from a fixed cap rather than from assets being actively removed from circulation and put to work. A shrinking float against steady or rising demand is the setup every holder wants.
Put those together and Chalom's pitch is coherent. ETH earns, ETH sits at the center of the tokenization economy, and ETH's tradeable supply is tightening as more of it gets staked.
The Honest Counterargument for Bitcoin
The Bitcoin-treasury camp does not think Chalom is wrong by accident. They think he is trading away the very features that make a reserve asset worth holding, and their case is genuinely strong.
Their core point is that Bitcoin is the superior treasury asset precisely because it is simpler. It has no yield, but it also carries no staking risk, no slashing risk, and no smart-contract risk. Its monetary policy is fixed and credibly neutral, which is exactly what a treasurer wants from something meant to sit untouched for years. The clearest expression of that view is the corporate Bitcoin-reserve model that treats BTC as pristine, do-nothing collateral, and its whole appeal is that it does nothing.
"Productive" cuts both ways. ETH's roughly 3% staking yield is real, but it comes attached to technical complexity, validator operations, and regulatory questions that a treasurer has to own. Yield means added risk surface, and every basis point of return is a basis point that has to be earned by taking on something a plain Bitcoin holding never touches. ETH's supply is also not fixed, which undercuts part of the scarcity story that Bitcoin gets to tell cleanly.
So the real decision is a tradeoff, not a verdict. A treasurer choosing a reserve is weighing simplicity and credibility on the Bitcoin side against productivity and ecosystem exposure on the Ethereum side. Reasonable, informed people land on both sides of that line, and anyone selling you a settled answer is selling something.
Why This Debate Matters for Traders Right Now
The reason to care is that this is no longer an academic argument. The corporate-treasury bid has become a real, recurring source of demand for both BTC and ETH, and the split between the two camps is playing out in actual capital flows rather than in conference panels.
Chalom is the leading voice arguing those flows should tilt toward Ethereum, and he is arguing it from the most credible seat available. If his thesis wins converts, more treasury capital rotates into ETH, the staked float keeps tightening, and the relative-value trade between the two assets shifts. If the simplicity argument holds, Bitcoin keeps its position as the default corporate reserve and ETH stays the higher-risk, higher-utility alternative.
Understanding both sides is how you read the ETH-versus-BTC ratio with real information instead of tribal loyalty. You do not have to agree with Chalom to use his argument. You just have to know it well enough to spot when the market starts pricing it in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Joseph Chalom?
Joseph Chalom is co-CEO of SharpLink, an Ethereum-treasury company, appointed in July 2025 after about 20 years at BlackRock. At BlackRock he helped build IBIT, ETHA, and BUIDL, making him one of the people who constructed the products that brought institutional money into crypto.
Why does Chalom prefer ETH over BTC for a corporate treasury?
He argues ETH is a productive asset that can be staked for roughly 3% annual yield, that it is the settlement layer for stablecoins and tokenized assets, and that staking plus treasury demand shrinks its liquid supply. Bitcoin, in his framing, just sits on the balance sheet without earning anything.
Is Ethereum actually a better treasury asset than Bitcoin?
There is no settled answer, and that is the honest take. ETH offers yield and ecosystem exposure but carries staking, smart-contract, and regulatory risk, while BTC offers a fixed supply and simplicity with no yield. Informed treasurers land on both sides depending on how they weigh productivity against conservatism.
How much ETH does SharpLink hold?
SharpLink holds more than $1.3 billion in ETH and stakes nearly all of it to earn native yield. Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin sits on the company's board, which underscores how deliberate the treasury strategy is.
The Bottom Line
Chalom is the strongest institutional case for ETH as corporate money because he built the institutional case for crypto in the first place, and he is now betting his own seat on Ethereum over Bitcoin. His three-part argument, yield plus settlement-layer utility plus a tightening float, is coherent and worth respecting. The Bitcoin camp's answer, that simplicity and a fixed supply are the point and yield is just added risk, is equally serious.
Watch the treasury flows and the staked-supply numbers over the coming quarters, because that is where this debate gets decided in real money rather than rhetoric. If more balance sheets follow SharpLink into staked ETH, the relative-value case Chalom is making starts to prove itself. If they stay with do-nothing Bitcoin reserves, the simplicity argument wins by default. Either way, the trader who understands both sides is the one positioned to read the rotation before it shows up on the chart.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always conduct your own research before making trading decisions.
