Joseph Chalom’s Vision for Ethereum
Joseph Chalom is diving into Ethereum, viewing it as more than just another blockchain. He’s convinced that this could be the backbone that Wall Street will eventually leverage.
Chalom, who serves as co-CEO of Sharplink and was once the head of digital assets at BlackRock, points to attributes like trust, security, and liquidity that financial institutions crave—all of which he believes Ethereum has. This conviction has led him to invest his post-BlackRock career in it.
“Ethereum dominates in terms of stablecoins, tokenized assets, and robust smart contract activity,” Chalom shared in an interview. “If we aim to digitize finance, we need a platform that financial entities can rely on, and that’s Ethereum.”
During his two-decade tenure at BlackRock, Chalom was instrumental in the development of the Aladdin platform, crucial for the firm’s operations and the largest risk management system in finance. He later spearheaded BlackRock’s ventures into the cryptocurrency market, which included backing Circle, launching IBIT, its most lucrative ETF, and investing in the tokenization company Securitize.
This experience reinforced his faith in the architecture of Ethereum. He sees blockchain as a versatile platform capable of facilitating not just financial transactions but also loans, trades, NFTs, and more, contrasting it with Bitcoin, which he regards merely as “a great store of value.”
Ether as a “Productive Asset”
One distinguishing factor of Ether is its yield through staking.
Unlike Bitcoin, which remains idle in portfolios, Ether generates an annual yield of about 3% via Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism. Chalom noted, “This is a productive asset, and that productivity can be distributed back to shareholders.”
At Sharplink, which manages around $3 billion in Ether, Chalom is striving to demonstrate this potential.
The vast majority of the company’s Ether is actively invested. Additionally, through new partnerships with ConsenSys, Linea, and Eigenlayer, Sharplink is investigating “re-staking” strategies to unlock more revenue while keeping assets with regulated custodians.
Chalom emphasizes that this kind of capital is shielded from short-term redemption pressures, allowing financial institutions to deliver DeFi-level returns while minimizing DeFi-level risks. “If you want to lock in a period, you can be ‘L’ for the locked total value,” he explained. “This opens doors to safer and improved returns.”
The Future of Digital Asset Treasury
Sharplink belongs to a growing group of digital asset treasury firms accumulating Ether. However, Chalom is skeptical about others’ ability to scale effectively. He believes that without substantial trading volumes, strong balance sheets, and dedicated teams for managing staking and investing, many firms might find it hard to succeed.
Chalom envisions Sharplink not as a break from his time at BlackRock but as a seamless continuation of his mission: connecting traditional finance with the crypto landscape. “We spent decades developing systems laden with intermediaries,” he remarked. “Ethereum presents the chance to rebuild those systems more quickly, affordably, and securely.”
He doesn’t see Ethereum as merely a speculative tool. Instead, he argues it will serve as the foundation for the next era of digital finance. “In the long run, terms like DeFi or TradFi won’t matter. We’ll simply refer to it as finance, and Ethereum will underpin it,” he stated.
