For Joseph Chalom, Ethereum is not just another blockchain. This is the infrastructure he believes Wall Street will eventually rely on.
Chalom, co-CEO of Sharplink and former head of digital assets at BlackRock, says the qualities that financial institutions are most interested in – trust, security and liquidity – are all present in Ethereum. That’s why he’s betting his post-BlackRock career on it.
“Ethereum has the majority of high-quality stablecoins, tokenized assets, and smart contract activity,” Chalom told CoinDesk in an interview. “If you want to digitize finance, you need a chain that institutions can trust – and that’s Ethereum.”
At BlackRock, Chalom spent 20 years helping develop the Aladdin platform, a cornerstone of the firm’s internal operations that has become one of the largest portfolio and risk management systems in the financial industry. He later led BlackRock’s entry into the crypto space, backing Circle, launching the company’s most profitable exchange-traded fund (ETF), IBIT, and investing in tokenization company Securitize.
This experience shaped his belief in the design of Ethereum. He describes blockchain as a “general purpose” platform – capable of supporting not only financial transactions, but also lending, trading, NFTs and complex applications – unlike bitcoin, which he calls “a great store of value”.
“Productive asset”
The native yield of Ether staking also sets it apart.
Unlike bitcoin, which remains unused in wallets, ether generates a 3% annual return thanks to Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism. “It’s a productive asset,” Chalom said. “And that productivity can be returned to shareholders.”
At Sharplink, which holds more than $3 billion in ether, Chalom is trying to prove it.
Nearly all of the company’s ether is at stake. And through new partnerships with Consensys, Linea and EigenLayer, Sharplink is exploring “restoration” strategies to unlock additional yield, while retaining assets with regulated custodians.
He claims that this type of capital, held on balance sheets without short-term redemption pressure, allows institutions to deliver DeFi-level returns without DeFi-level risk. “If you’re willing to lock duration, you can be the ‘L’ of total value locked,” Chalom said. “This opens access to safer and better yields.”
The future of DAT
Sharplink is one of several digital asset treasury companies accumulating ether, but Chalom believes most will struggle to scale. Without strong trading volumes, clean balance sheets and internal teams managing staking and investments, he believes many treasuries will underperform, he says.
Chalom sees Sharplink not as a break from his career at BlackRock, but as a continuation of his mission: connecting traditional finance with the crypto ecosystem. “We spent decades building rails full of middlemen,” he said. “Ethereum gives us a chance to rebuild these rails – faster, cheaper and more secure.”
He does not view Ethereum as a speculative technology. He sees this as the foundation of the next wave of digital finance. “Over time,” he said, “we won’t call it DeFi or TradFi. We’ll just call it finance. And Ethereum will be the infrastructure underneath.”
