For Joseph Chalom, Ethereum Not just another blockchain. This is the infrastructure he believes Wall Street will eventually build.
Chalom, co-CEO of Sharplink and former head of digital assets at BlackRock, said that the characteristics of a financial institution that cares about—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 stablecoins, tokenized assets and high-quality smart contract activity,” Chalom told Coindesk in an interview. “If you’re going to digitize finance, you need a chain institution that you can trust – and it’s Ethereum.”
At BlackRock, Chalom spent 20 years helping scale the Aladdin platform, a cornerstone of the firm’s internal operations that became one of the largest portfolio and risk management systems in the financial industry. Later, he led BlackRock’s entry into the crypto space, backing circles, launching the company’s most profitable exchange-traded fund (ETF), IBIT, and investing in tokenization firms.
That experience shapes his conviction in Ethereum’s design. He described blockchain as a “multi-purpose” platform—capable of supporting not only financial transactions, but lending, trading, NFT and complex applications—in contrast to Bitcoin, which he called “a great store of value.”
‘Productive asset’
Ether’s native yield from staking also sets it.
Unlike Bitcoin, which sits in portfolios, ether generates a 3% annual yield through Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism. “It’s a productive asset,” Chalom said. “And productivity can be returned to shareholders.”
With Sharplink, which holds more than $3 billion worth of ether, Chalom is trying to prove just that.
Almost all of the company’s ether is staked. And through new partnerships with Consensys, Linea and Eigenlayer, Sharplink is exploring “restorative” strategies to unlock additional yield – while maintaining assets with regulated custodians.
He said this type of capital, held on balance sheets without short-term redemption pressure, allows institutions to offer defi-level returns without defi-level risk. “If you want to lock the duration, you can be ‘L’ in the total amount that is locked,” says Chalom. “It opens up access to safer and more efficient returns.”
The future
Sharplink is one of many 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 stakes and investments, he says many fortunes cannot be turned around.
Chalom sees Sharplink not as a break from his career at Blackrock, but as a continuation of his mission: bridging traditional finance into the crypto ecosystem. “We spent decades building railroads full of middlemen,” he said. “Ethereum gives us an opportunity to rebuild the railways – faster, cheaper and safer.”
He doesn’t think of Ethereum as speculative tech. He saw it as the foundation for the next wave of Digitized 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.”
