In a significant move for the Ethereum ecosystem, the advocacy firm Etherealize has successfully raised $40 million to bolster its efforts in promoting Ethereum among finance firms. This funding round, led by crypto-focused venture capital firms Electric Capital and Paradigm, comes at a time when public companies have collectively added over $1.2 billion worth of Ether to their treasuries in the current week of 2025.
Etherealize, which launched in January 2025 with initial backing from the Ethereum Foundation and co-founder Vitalik Buterin, aims to drive institutional adoption of Ethereum through education and advocacy. The firm recognizes that while Wall Street has shown interest in cryptocurrencies, it has yet to embrace Ether (ETH) at the same level as Bitcoin (BTC). According to co-founder Grant Hummer, there is a significant gap in understanding ETH among institutions, which the company seeks to bridge.
The $40 million raised will be strategically allocated towards developing crypto-based financial tools specifically tailored for institutional clients. Etherealize plans to create infrastructure that facilitates the private trading and settlement of tokenized assets, alongside a settlement platform designed for institutional tokenization workflows. Additionally, the firm is focusing on applications that cater to the market for tokenized fixed-income products, such as tokenized bonds.
“Over the past decade, Ethereum has gone from an experiment to the world’s most battle-tested, open financial network,”
noted co-founder Danny Ryan, emphasizing that the funding will assist in upgrading “institutional finance to modern, safer, globally accessible rails.”
The timing of Etherealize’s funding round aligns with a notable surge in Ethereum acquisitions by public firms, which have collectively added over $1.2 billion worth of ETH to their holdings this week. According to data from Strategic ETH Reserve, the largest single addition came from The Ether Machine, a crypto treasury company preparing for a public offering, which raised 150,000 ETH valued at approximately $654 million on Tuesday. Concurrently, BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest ETH holding firm, reported purchasing an additional 150,000 ETH over the previous week.
Other notable acquisitions include Sharplink Gaming and Yunfeng Financial, which announced ETH purchases worth $176 million and $44 million, respectively. These developments have garnered attention from analysts like Nick Forster, founder of the crypto options platform Derive, who suggested that potential Federal Reserve rate cuts could create a favorable environment for ETH, leading to increased institutional holdings and price potential as the year progresses.
Forster indicated that firms currently hold nearly 4% of the total ETH supply and projected that this could rise to between 6% and 10% by the end of the year, significantly impacting ETH’s price dynamics. He also estimated a 44% likelihood of ETH reaching $6,000 by year-end, with a 30% chance of hitting that milestone by the end of October 2025. As of now, Ether trades just under $4,400, reflecting a 1.8% increase for the day but showing an 11.5% decline from its peak of around $4,950 recorded on August 24, 2025.
With the rapid evolution of Ethereum and its adoption in institutional finance, Etherealize is positioned at the forefront of this transformative landscape, aiming to enhance both understanding and utilization of the Ethereum blockchain in traditional financial sectors.
For further details, you can refer to the original source of this information at Cointelegraph.