Companies are increasingly turning to Ethereum staking to obtain passive yield, and this change is reducing the amount of Ether available for sale on the public market.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate ether (ETH) holder, staked 342,560 ETH worth more than $1 billion in the two days ending Sunday, according to blockchain data platform Lookonchain.
Staking involves locking ETH into Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network to secure the blockchain in exchange for a passive annual percentage yield (APY) of approximately 3% to 5%.
BitMine’s $1 billion in Ether staking has also had a significant impact on the Ethereum validation queue, with the entry queue nearly doubling the size of the exit queue for the first time in over six months, Cointelegraph reported early Monday.
sauce: look on chain
Related: Trend Research raises ETH holdings to $1.8 billion with $35 million purchase, ‘bullish’ for 2026
According to validatorqueue, the validator entry queue is 12 days and 20 hours with 739,824 ETH waiting to be staked, while the exit queue is 6 days and 2 hours with 349,867 ETH waiting to be withdrawn.
This queue shows that there are nearly twice as many entities looking to stake ETH to earn passive income compared to validators waiting for stake withdrawals, indicating growing long-term confidence in Ether.
Ethereum validator queue, entry, exit and all-time charts. Source: validatorqueue.com
A large exit queue indicates that validators are trying to withdraw Ether and may be trying to sell their holdings.
Related: Crypto Speculation Hits 2024 Lows as TradFi Leveraged ETF Hits Record High of $239 Billion
Corporate treasury targets Ether yield
Most major corporate Ether holders, including SharpLink Gaming, Bit Digital, and The Ether Machine, stake a large portion of their ETH on passive income.
Sharplink Gaming, the second-largest Ether holder, said it has staked “nearly all” of its Ether holdings, generating a total of 9,701 Ether worth $29 million in staking rewards, according to the company’s dashboard.
Ethermachine, the third-largest holder with $1.49 billion in Ether, has managed to “fully stake” its treasury on-chain and consistently rank in the top 5% of validators for staking reward efficiency, the company announced in October.
The increase in the amount of staked ETH is effectively reducing the supply of sellable Ether, which is considered a net positive for the long-term value growth of the second-largest cryptocurrency.
Total ETH holdings and ETH staking rewards. Source: sharplink.com
Despite the increase in the amount of ETH staked, the industry’s most profitable traders, tracked as “smart money” traders on Nansen’s blockchain intelligence platform, continue to reduce their Spot Ether holdings.
ETH/USD, 1 day chart, token god mode. Source: Nansen.ai
According to Nansen, smart money traders sold a cumulative $4.26 million worth of Spot Ether tokens across 53 wallets last week, while whale wallets bought a cumulative $11.6 million during the same period.
Celebrities have also purchased $6 million worth of Spot Ether, and new wallets have purchased more than $517,000 in the past week, showing Ether demand from crypto investors with newly minted wallets.
magazine: Sharplink executives shocked by BTC and ETH ETF holdings — Joseph Chalom
