Corporate treasuries have accumulated 3 million ether (ETH), the Ethereum cryptocurrency, held by 67 entities, including public companies, DAOs, foundations, and governments, marking a 2,500% increase since April, when holdings totaled 112,960 ETH. This surge reflects Wall Street's growing interest in the crypto asset as a store of value.

Interest in ETH is largely due to the 3% annual returns offered by staking. This has motivated companies to issue debt through stock or convertible bonds to finance ETH purchases, without relying on operating income.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, values this institutional adoption and expressed it in an interview yesterday, August 7, highlighting that “the social aspect of coordinating around ETH as an asset that companies can hold as part of their treasury is a good and valuable thing.”

For him, offering diverse investment vehicles is positive, since "giving people more options is good. There are always people in all kinds of financial circumstances who have different requirements, incentives, or conditions regarding participation formats."

However, Buterin warns about the dangers of excessive leverage. He explains that if treasuries caused ETH to crash in three years, his guess as to why "would basically be that it somehow became an overleveraged game."

By this, he means that companies could take on too much debt to buy ETH, which, in the event of a sharp drop, would trigger forced liquidations, escalating to declines of 50%, 70%, or even 90%, compounded by a loss of credibility. He adds that Ethereum ecosystem players are responsible, and emphasizes: "We are not talking about followers of Do Kwon," referring to the South Korean entrepreneur blamed for the collapse of the LUNA token and the dollar-pegged stablecoin TerraUSD (UST).

Buterin warns: “As long as leverage doesn’t get too high and these things don’t start getting into those kinds of mechanics,” the system can remain robust.