For Joseph Chalom, Ethereum is not just another blockchain. It’s the infrastructure he believes Wall Street will ultimately build upon.
Chalom, co-CEO of Sharplink and former head of digital assets at BlackRock, says the qualities that financial institutions care about most — 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 that institutions can trust – and that’s Ethereum.”
At BlackRock, Chalom spent 20 years helping to 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. He later led BlackRock’s foray into crypto, backing Circle, launching the firm’s most profitable exchange-traded fund (ETF), IBIT, and investing in tokenization firm Securitize.
That experience shaped his beliefs about Ethereum’s design. He describes blockchain as a “multi-purpose” platform — capable of supporting not only financial transactions, but lending, trading, NFTs and complex applications — unlike bitcoin, which he calls “a large store of value.”
‘Productive active’
Ether’s native yield from staking also sets it apart.
Unlike bitcoin, which is inactive in portfolios, ether generates 3% annual dividends through Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism. “It’s a productive asset,” Chalom said. “And that productivity can be returned to shareholders.”
At Sharplink, which holds over $3 billion worth of ether, Chalom is trying to prove just that.
Almost the entire ether of the company is bet. And through new partnerships with Consensys, Linea and EigenLayer, Sharplink is exploring “recapture” strategies to unlock additional returns – while keeping assets with regulated custodians.
He says this kind of capital, held on balance sheets without short-term redemption pressure, lets institutions offer DeFi-level returns without DeFi-level risk. “If you’re willing to lock the duration, you can be ‘L’ in the total value locked,” Chalom said. “It opens up access to safer and better returns.”
DAT future
Sharplink is one of several digital assets accumulating ether, but Chalom believes most will struggle to scale. Without strong trading volumes, clean balance sheets and in-house teams managing bets and investments, he says many treasuries will underperform.
Chalom sees Sharplink not as a break from his BlackRock career, but as a continuation of his mission: to build a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto ecosystem. “We spent decades building rails full of intermediate links,” he said. “Ethereum gives us a chance to rebuild these rails – faster, cheaper and more secure.”
He doesn’t think of Ethereum as speculative technology. He sees it as the basis 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.”
