SharpLink’s CIO clarifies that the Ethereum reserve company did not sell ETH

SharpLink’s CIO Matthew Sheffield had to set the record straight, addressing a November 6 news report that made the rounds after blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence wrongly reported that a wallet linked to SharpLink Gaming had moved considerable ETH to a CEX.

The public company has made its name for its aggressive Ethereum (ETH) accumulation strategy, and the implication of sales would have raised questions about the health of its business and its liquidity levels.

The wrong label had far-reaching effects

According to the post shared by Lookonchain and based on data from Arkham, SharpLink had redeemed 5,284 ETH and deposited 4,364 ETH to the OKX exchange hours before. Historically, such moves usually precede entities offloading tokens on the market.

All that attention translated into widespread speculation, with the consensus leaning towards SharpLink initiating a major ETH sell-off. It did not help matters that Ethereum’s price had been seeing volatility, and the unrealized losses on the company holdings kept mounting.

What followed was short-term market jitters. However, all that ended after Sheffield implied in a tweet that the wallet does not belong to SharpLink and that it was incorrectly tagged on Arkham’s platform.

In response to his post, Arkham revealed that the “label is a prediction from our AI model, not an Arkham-verified label. AI predicted labels are indicated by the purple outline and question mark.”

The post continued by saying Arkham-verified SharpLink wallets appear under the SharpLink entity on Arkham and that the wallet in question is not one of those.

Sheffield expressed appreciation for the clarification from Arkham while confirming that the wallet no longer reflects the SharpLink label.

“Making predictions on wallet owners is an interesting problem,” he added. “Probabilistic assumptions are definitionally never going to be 100% accurate. But it’s generally an effective tagging algo from what I’ve seen. Big fan of the Arkham product.”

The incident briefly put some sell pressure on ETH prices and the SBET stock, which dipped up to 8% on November 6. However, the market has since corrected as sentiments stabilize.

SharpLink raised $76.5 million through a premium-priced stock deal

SharpLink raised $76.5 million in a direct stock offering priced above market, according to a press release from the company last month. According to the release, it sold 4.5 million shares at $17 per share, a 12% premium over its $15.15 closing price on October 15.

That price reflected a premium to the company’s net asset value of its 859K ETH holdings, reflecting what the company called “strong institutional confidence” in its strategy.

Top 10 Ethereum holding entities. Source: Strategic ETH Reserve

An unnamed institutional investor scooped up the shares and also got a 90-day option to buy another 4.5 million shares at $17.50.

For now, the firm’s Ether holdings are second only to Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), which currently has 3.40 million ETH in its treasury.

It has achieved this by using equity issuances to fund purchases in a self-reinforcing cycle during bull markets. Even though the strategy has worked out so far, it continues to attract mixed reviews with critics grounding their argument in factors like over-leverage and volatility exposure.