Ethereum advocacy startup Etherealize has secured $40 million in fresh funding to expand its efforts to promote institutional adoption of the blockchain, in a week when public companies have added more than $1.2 billion worth of Ether to their balance sheets.
The round, led by crypto venture firms Electric Capital and Paradigm, will fund new products designed to bring Ethereum to Wall Street, the company said Wednesday.
Founded in January with backing from the Ethereum Foundation and co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Etherealize aims to educate institutions about Ethereum and its native token. Co-founder Grant Hummer previously noted that despite the launch of ETH exchange-traded funds, institutional investors still lacked understanding of the asset compared with Bitcoin.
The company said it will use the new capital to build infrastructure for private trading and settlement of tokenized assets, including a platform tailored to institutional workflows and applications for tokenized fixed-income markets such as bonds.
“Over the past decade, Ethereum has gone from an experiment to the world’s most battle-tested, open financial network,” said Etherealize co-founder Danny Ryan. He added that the new funding will help bring “institutional finance to modern, safer, globally accessible rails.”
Public Firms Add $1.26B in Ether This Week
The raise comes as public companies have collectively added about $1.26 billion worth of ETH to their treasuries this week, according to data from Strategic ETH Reserve.
Crypto treasury firm The Ether Machine led the surge on Tuesday with a 150,000 ETH purchase worth $654 million as it prepares to go public. The same day, BitMine Immersion Technologies—the largest corporate ETH holder—revealed it had accumulated more than 150,000 ETH over the prior week. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham also tracked another $65 million worth of ETH flowing into BitMine’s wallets on Wednesday.
Sharplink Gaming and Hong Kong-listed Yunfeng Financial joined the buying spree on Tuesday, picking up $176 million and $44 million worth of ETH, respectively.
ETH Price Bets: 44% Chance of $6K by Year-End
Nick Forster, founder of crypto options platform Derive, wrote Wednesday that the combination of corporate buying and a potential Federal Reserve rate cut could give ETH “explosive potential heading into Q4.”
He noted that public firms now hold nearly 4% of the token’s circulating supply, and that figure could rise to 6–10% by year-end if buying continues, positioning companies as a key driver of ETH’s price.
Forster estimated there is a 44% chance ETH reaches $6,000 by December, with 30% odds of hitting that level by the end of October.
Ether was trading just below $4,400 on Wednesday, up 1.8% on the day but still down 11.5% from its August 24 peak near $4,950.
