Article: Zen, PANews As a profitable asset,

Ethereum continues to attract institutional capital to enter the market through mechanisms such as pledging and re-pledging. Recently, Joseph Chalom, who has been an executive at BlackRock (BlackRock), the world's largest asset management company for 20 years, announced that he has joined the listed Ethereum treasury company SharpLink Gaming (code: SBET) as Co-CEO (Co‑CEO), starting

a new chapter in his career.

Following Chalom's announcement, SharpLink Gaming immediately purchased over 77,000 ETH over the weekend and put all of them as collateral. SharpLink currently holds about 438,000 ETH. Following Bitmine, another ETH treasury strategy company, the two companies are also competing to buy ETH for the position of “ETH version of MicroStrategy.” Bitmine, under the appeal of Tom Lee, the chairman of the board of directors and a senior analyst known as the “magic operator of Wall Street”, attracted heavy purchases from Ark Invest from Mu's sister Cathie Wood. SharpLink's support team mainly has a background in the coin industry, and there is an urgent need for a leader with traditional financial connections to attract Wall Street capital. Chalom was the perfect choice

.

Ranking of listed companies' Ethereum holdings

Starting with a law firm to cryptocurrency, SBET spent $12.5 million to graduate Joseph Chalom from Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor's degree in international affairs, and later obtained

a J.D. from Columbia Law School. He began his career as a corporate and regulatory legal advisor. He worked as a senior lawyer at Arnold & Porter Law Firm and Skadden, Arps LLP, providing legal services to a number

of investment banks and large enterprises.

In 2005, Chalom joined BlackRock and transitioned into the fintech sector. Chalom was the chief operating officer of BlackRock Solutions under BlackRock Solutions, leading the commercialization and external expansion of the global institutional risk control and investment management platform Aladdin, transforming

it from an internal tool to a core fintech hub serving more than $10 trillion of global assets.
At the

beginning of 2020, Chalom was promoted to Managing Director and Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partners. He is fully responsible for BlackRock's strategic planning and implementation in the fields of data and indices, digital assets, technology ecosystems, etc., and is leading cooperation with leading digital asset infrastructure institutions such as Coinbase Prime, Securitize, BNY Mellon, and Circle. Through cross-border joint ventures, technology docking and product promotion, traditional asset management platforms are deeply connected to the blockchain ecosystem.

“After 20 years at BlackRock, I'm starting a new chapter and joining SharpLink Gaming as Co-CEO.” In late July of this year, Chalom, an executive at a traditional asset management giant, announced that his career focus would shift to cryptocurrency and Ethereum treasury. SharpLink Gaming founder and CEO Rob

Phythian will gradually transition to the role of president and remain on the board of directors to lead the company's growth with Chalom.

Joseph Lubin, founder of Consensys and chairman of SharpLink, said that Chalom has an outstanding influence in promoting institutional-level digital asset applications, and that his joining is a strong endorsement of SharpLink's Ethereum treasury strategy and the company's vision that “Ethereum will become a global financial infrastructure.”

According to the Form 8‑K (Significant Matters Report) submitted by SharpLink Gaming to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the overall hiring cost was $12.5 million to attract Chalom to join. Of this, the annual fixed basic salary is $750,000, and the annual performance bonus target is 100% of the basic salary. If performance is exceeded, up to 150% can be paid. The company also awarded Chalom a $7 million Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) as a one-time signing reward. 2/3 (approximately $4.66 million) of these shares were vested over time and the other 1/3 (approximately $2.33 million) were vested according to the three-year performance review target. Additionally, in the terms of the Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP), SharpLink has set a minimum incentive amount of at least $4 million for Chalom in

fiscal year 2026.

Joseph, leader of

BlackRock's crypto asset ETF

Chalom is one of the key players driving BlackRock's digital asset strategy

.

Under his leadership, BlackRock launched the world's largest Bitcoin ETF “iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT)” in January 2024 — currently managing more than $80 billion in assets, significantly ahead of Bitcoin ETFs such as Fidelity FBTC and Grayscale GBTC, which are around $20-24 billion. At the beginning of this month, IBIT holdings surpassed 700,000 BTC, accounting for 55% of the total Bitcoin holdings in all US spot Bitcoin ETFs. Furthermore, IBIT's annual fee revenue generated for BlackRock is roughly the same as its iconic product, the iShares core S&P 500 ETF, yet the latter's assets

are nearly nine times larger than the former.

On July 23, 2024, after more than half a year of application and preparation, BlackRock launched iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) to provide traditional investors with a regulated and direct way to participate in the cryptocurrency market.

As of July 25, one year after launch, ETHA's management scale reached $10 billion, accounting for about half of the total asset management of an Ethereum ETF. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas notes that this milestone makes ETHA the third-fastest ETF in history,

behind BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC).

Additionally, Chalom launched BUIDL, the first Ethereum-based treasury bond tokenization product, which equities the proceeds of traditional treasury bonds Chain provides institutional customers with innovative solutions that combine compliance and liquidity. It has also facilitated and led strategic cooperation between BlackRock and digital asset infrastructure institutions such as Coinbase Prime, Securitize, BNY Mellon, Circle, etc., to deeply connect traditional asset management platforms with the blockchain ecosystem through cross-border joint ventures, technology docking,

and product promotion.

The intersection and origin of the Ethereum ecosystem BlackRock began experimenting with cryptocurrency as early as 10 years ago, driven by Mary-Catherine
Lader, a former president and

COO

who recently left Uniswap.

In 2015, Lader headed BlackRock's Blockchain Working Group, organizing employees from different teams to conduct months of research on cryptocurrencies and interact with industry experts such as Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. Potential investment opportunities, how blockchain is being applied, and partnerships in this field were discussed. Joseph Lubin was the CEO of Consensys at the time and later became Chairman of SharpLink, which is probably

the period when he first intersected with Chalom.

Joseph Chalom clearly began engaging in and promoting the crypto asset business. BlackRock Digital Asset Director Robert Mitchnick and his digital asset team began reporting to Joseph Chalom in early 2020. At the time, Chalom was the chief operating officer of BlackRockSolutions (BlackRockSolutions), a subsidiary that developed the Aladdin system as an integrated fintech platform that was initially used for BlackRock's

internal risk control and investment process management, and later became the core platform for global institutional clients.

It's worth mentioning that Mitchnick joined BlackRock in 2018, being the agency's first full-time employee to focus on the cryptocurrency sector, and also marked the beginning of BlackRock's systematic research into the crypto market. In his first two years at the helm, Mitchnick's senior leader was Lader, who chose to leave BlackRock to join Uniswap in 2021.

In August 2022, under Chalom's leadership, BlackRock and Coinbase partnered — Coinbase Prime will provide Aladdin's institutional clients with cryptocurrency trading, escrow, primary broker, and reporting capabilities. Chalom said its institutional clients are increasingly interested in entering the

digital asset market and are focusing on how to effectively manage the operational life cycle of these assets.

As the crypto business progressed, Chalom also became a staunch supporter of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Facing the crypto market bear market in the second half of 2022, Chalom said in an interview with “Business Insider”: “Despite the cold winter, cryptocurrency's market capitalization is still as high as trillion dollars, and we are seeing that the accelerated development of these technologies has both created opportunities and improved efficiency.”