South Korea Must Move Past Crypto Trauma, Former BlackRock Executive Says

Interview with SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom

Company Holds More Than 860,000 Ether

Former BlackRock Executive Helped Lead Crypto ETF Launches

Sees South Korea as Key Market, Says It Can Lead Asia

Industry Should Persuade, Not Clash With, Government

Regulators Need to Move Past Trauma and Open the Door to Innovation

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"South Korea's blockchain developers have capabilities that are second to none, even compared with Silicon Valley. The country should not let past trauma suppress innovation. It needs to turn the regulatory red light into a green light so these developers can change the world."

Joseph Chalom, chief executive officer of SharpLink, made the remarks in an interview with Bloombergingbit on April 23. Regulation is needed to protect investors, he said, but it should not block the industry's growth.

Korea Needs to Move Past Crypto Trauma; Banks and Crypto Can Coexist

Chalom has visited Seoul three times in the past five months, underscoring his view that South Korea is a critical market. The country achieved rapid growth through aggressive technological innovation, he said, and there is no reason it cannot lead Asia in blockchain technology. Competing with Singapore and Hong Kong, South Korea will ultimately emerge as the winner, he added.

The industry should avoid confronting regulators if it wants to get there. Chalom, who previously helped lead the launch of crypto exchange-traded funds at BlackRock, said the US Securities and Exchange Commission had also taken a negative view of digital assets in the past. The industry spent a year and a half persuading the agency. Companies pursuing innovation should cooperate with authorities and educate them rather than treating them as enemies, he said.

He also called for a clear legal framework for digital assets. Stablecoins are digital fiat currencies backed by assets such as bonds, he said. While he understands South Korean regulators' concerns about outflows of the won, setting clear rules quickly is the starting point for financial innovation. Banks and the crypto industry can coexist, he added. Good innovation that benefits consumers cannot be stopped. He said he hopes South Korea will swiftly finalize the second phase of its Digital Asset Basic Act.

Chalom also had a message for South Korean regulators. They should not remain trapped by trauma from past crypto-related incidents and suppress the broader innovation ecosystem out of fear, he said. He called for strong and thorough guardrails to protect retail investors, while allowing innovation within that framework to proceed. Blockchain technology is a powerful engine that can reshape the South Korean economy, he added.

Goal Is to Secure 5% of Ether Supply

SharpLink, a Nasdaq-listed company, is the first company in the world to adopt ether as a treasury reserve asset. More recently, it accumulated $3 billion worth of ether with support from Consensys, the Ethereum software company led by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.

Ether, unlike bitcoin, is a productive asset that generates on-chain yield through staking, Chalom said. SharpLink currently holds about 860,000 ether, worth roughly 3 trillion won. As the world's second-largest holder of ether, the company has never sold any of its holdings and stakes 100% of them, returning compounded yields to investors, he said.

Chalom also highlighted SharpLink's edge over exchange-traded funds. Directly holding and staking spot crypto is often impossible for institutions under internal rules, he said. ETFs also need to meet client redemption liquidity, limiting staking ratios to around 80%. By contrast, buying SharpLink stock gives investors both upside from ether price gains and the benefit of 100% staking with compounded returns, he added.

He dismissed concerns that large institutional sales could drive prices lower. In practice, market volatility is driven not by large institutions but by short-term retail traders, he said. Great technology companies such as Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla also went through severe volatility in their early days. Ether's volatility is not a flaw but a positive feature of an innovative asset, he added.

His long-term goal is to accumulate 5% of all circulating ether. SharpLink currently holds about 0.7% of supply. The company plans to keep reinvesting staking rewards until it reaches 5%, he said. It will not go beyond that level because it does not want to undermine decentralization, a core principle of the ecosystem.

AI Agent Economy Is Coming; Ethereum Will Be Central

Chalom identified the convergence of artificial intelligence agents and on-chain finance as a key trend for next year.

Before long, people will entrust asset management to AI assistants on their smartphones, he said. Those AI assistants will operate nonstop on blockchains that never sleep.

Ethereum will become the core infrastructure of this AI agent economy, he said. In markets where trillions of dollars in institutional capital move, perfect trust that assets will not disappear comes first. Ethereum has proven its security and integrity without interruption for the past 10 years and six months. Speed constraints are being addressed through Layer 2 networks, he added.

Mass adoption will take time, but the wave cannot be stopped, Chalom said, stressing the need for clear standards. Ethereum standards including ERC-8004, designed to verify bots' authority and trustworthiness, are already being developed. In the future, users will use apps without even realizing they are using blockchain technology, he added.