Crypto Venture Giants Back Institutional Ethereum Push
Ethereum advocacy firm Etherealize has closed a $40 million funding round, backed by prominent crypto investors Electric Capital and Paradigm. The firm said the capital would be used to accelerate its mission of expanding Ethereum adoption among institutional players.
Founded in January with early support from the Ethereum Foundation and co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Etherealize aims to bridge the knowledge gap surrounding Ethereum in traditional finance.
“Over the past decade, Ethereum has gone from an experiment to the world’s most battle-tested, open financial network,” said co-founder Danny Ryan. “This funding will help us bring institutional finance onto modern, safer, globally accessible rails.”
Building Institutional Tools for Ethereum Integration
The firm plans to use the fresh capital to develop Ethereum-based tools for financial institutions. These include infrastructure for private trading and settlement of tokenized assets, platforms tailored to tokenized fixed income products like digital bonds, and settlement tools for institutional workflows.
Co-founder Grant Hummer previously noted that despite ETF launches, institutions were still undereducated on ETH—something Etherealize seeks to change.
Public Firms Add Over $1.2B in ETH Holdings
The announcement comes during a wave of corporate Ethereum accumulation. Strategic ETH Reserve data shows public companies added over $1.26 billion in ETH this week alone. The Ether Machine led with a $654 million purchase (150,000 ETH), while BitMine Immersion Technologies added $65 million worth on Wednesday.
Sharplink Gaming and Hong Kong-listed Yunfeng Financial also announced ETH acquisitions valued at $176 million and $44 million, respectively.
Nick Forster, founder of Derive, commented that ETH’s recent institutional momentum, combined with expectations of a Fed rate cut, gives the asset “explosive potential” going into Q4. He estimated a 44% chance that ETH reaches $6,000 by year-end.
