Sharplink Gaming, one of the largest ether (ETH) treasury companies, had a meltdown in after-hours trading yesterday as its shares crashed from $33 at NASDAQ’s closing bell to below $11 by 8pm.
Two weeks ago, Sharplink shares (SBET) were worth $124, meaning they’ve shed 91% of their value since this all-time high.
Panicked over a seemingly surprise announcement of shareholder dilution, a viral tweet from The Block’s Steven Zheng claimed, “Basically every participant in SBET’s private placement filed to dump all their shares less than a month after they announced the ETH Treasury Strategy move.”
Concerningly, trading volume for Sharplink exploded over 10X higher than its average, and its single-day loss on a percentage basis exceeded any prior trading day.
Sharplink Gaming “FUD”
A lawyer at ConsenSys, Joe Lubin’s pro-Ethereum conglomerate, sprang into action to explain the situation, claiming that the news was not nearly as bad as it seemed.
In his opinion, the Form S-3ASR in question was “a standard Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) resale registration” and did not “reflect any actual sales.”
Incredibly, the lawyer dismissed the panic entirely as “just a bunch of FUD by people who clearly don’t understand.”
Needless to say, market participants in after-hours NASDAQ trading disagreed entirely.
Read more: Ethereum giant ConsenSys sues former fund manager for resume fraud
The shelf registration statement was a requirement for the resale of over 58 million shares of SBET, which were part of a capital raise to purchase ETH.
Prior to its collapse over the past two weeks, Sharplink was aspiring to become a shining example of a non-bitcoin crypto treasury company. Indeed, Joe Lubin himself is the Chairman of the company, and it had raised $450 million to build its crypto treasury.
