Sharplink Reports $734M Loss for 2025 as Ethereum Price Drop Hits Its ETH Treasury
Sharplink, Inc. the Minneapolis-based company that pivoted from sports betting affiliate marketing to Ethereum treasury management in June 2025, reported its first full-year results under that strategy on Monday. The headline number is a $734.6 million net loss for 2025, compared with a $10.1 million loss in 2024.
The detail matters more than the headline. Of that total, $616.2 million represents unrealized losses on ETH holdings as Ethereum’s price declined sharply across the second half of the year, from roughly $3,400 in August to below $2,000 by year end.
An additional $140.2 million reflects an impairment charge on liquid staked ETH, or LsETH, which US GAAP accounting rules require companies to take whenever the market price of a crypto asset falls below its carrying value, regardless of whether any assets were sold. No ETH was sold. The loss is entirely a paper one.
That distinction is important but does not make the number meaningless. US GAAP crypto impairment rules are asymmetric: losses must be recognized when prices fall, but gains can only be recognized when assets are sold. A company holding 864,000 ETH through a sustained price decline will show massive reported losses even if its actual treasury position is unchanged.
Sharplink is not the first company to run into this. MicroStrategy, now rebranded as Strategy, has reported similar multi-billion dollar paper losses on its Bitcoin treasury through volatile periods.
The accounting rules are widely criticized within the industry, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently updated guidance to allow fair value measurement going forward, but Sharplink’s 2025 results predate that change taking effect.
What the Operating Business Actually Looks Like
Beneath the impairment charges, Sharplink’s ETH staking revenue has been growing. Staking income rose from $10.3 million in Q3 to $15.3 million in Q4 2025, driven by the company staking nearly 100% of its ETH holdings across native Ethereum staking, liquid staking protocols, and a $170 million deployment on Consensys’ Linea Layer 2 network.
Since launching its staking strategy in June 2025, Sharplink has generated 14,516 ETH in cumulative rewards, a yield accruing entirely to stockholders. Sharplink’s chairman is Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Consensys, the Ethereum software firm. CEO Joseph Chalom joined from BlackRock, where he led the firm’s digital asset strategy.
The company has raised over $2.6 billion in capital through a combination of private investment in public equity (PIPE) rounds, at-the-market offerings, and registered direct offerings to build its ETH position. Institutional ownership hit 46% by year end, up from under 10% in June 2025, with approximately 60 new institutional investors added in Q4 alone.
The Bigger Picture for ETH Treasury Companies
Sharplink is currently the second-largest publicly traded Ethereum holder, behind Bitmine, which holds approximately 4.1 million ETH. The category of publicly traded ETH treasury companies has taken significant pressure from Ethereum’s price declining more than 60% from its August 2025 peak.
Several firms in the space have diversified away from pure ETH accumulation in response, ETHZilla, for instance, has pivoted toward tokenization. Sharplink, by contrast, has held its course, with CEO Chalom telling Decrypt that the company is focused on differentiating through discipline rather than accumulation volume.
“We’re not going to be the people who are prioritizing accumulation over everything,” he said. “2026 is really differentiating ourselves from the pack.” Whether Ethereum’s price recovery, which has taken ETH back above $2,000 since the February lows, is enough to close the gap on those paper losses is an open question. SBET stock was trading around $7.93 as of March 5, down roughly 50% from its October 2025 peak of around $17.
