Ethereum attracts institutional capital to get on board, BlackRock executive joins Treasury Company

Ethereum, through mechanisms such as staking and re-staking, is attracting an increasing amount of institutional capital. Recently, an executive who has worked for twenty years at the world's largest asset management company announced joining a listed Ethereum treasury company as co-CEO, starting a new chapter in his career.

After joining, the executive named Joseph Chalom led the treasury company to immediately purchase over 77,000 Ether and stake them all. Currently, the company holds about 438,000 Ether, second only to another ETH treasury strategy company. The two companies are competing to buy Ether, vying for the title of "ETH version of MicroStrategy."

Joseph Chalom graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in International Affairs and later obtained a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School. His career began as a corporate and regulatory legal advisor, having served as a senior attorney at several prestigious law firms, providing legal services to investment banks and large corporations.

In 2005, Chalom joined a large asset management company and began to venture into the fintech field. He served as the Chief Operating Officer of the company's solutions division, leading the productization and external expansion of a global institutional-level risk control and investment management platform. In early 2020, Chalom was promoted to Managing Director and Head of Strategic Ecosystem Partnerships, fully responsible for the company's strategic planning and execution in areas such as data, indices, digital assets, and technology ecosystems, and led collaborations with several leading digital asset infrastructure institutions.

To attract Chalom to join, this Ethereum treasury company offers a hiring cost of up to $12.5 million, including a $750,000 annual base salary, an annual performance bonus of up to 150%, $7 million in restricted stock units, and a long-term incentive plan.

Under the leadership of Chalom, the asset management company he originally worked for launched the world's largest Bitcoin ETF in January 2024, currently managing assets exceeding $80 billion. In July of this year, the company also launched an Ethereum ETF, which reached a management scale of $10 billion in just one year, accounting for half of the total assets managed for Ethereum ETFs.

Chalom has also launched the first tokenized national bond product based on Ethereum, bringing traditional national bond yields on-chain and providing institutional clients with an innovative solution that combines compliance and liquidity. He has also facilitated and led strategic collaborations with several digital asset infrastructure institutions, deeply connecting traditional asset management platforms with the blockchain ecosystem.

During the advancement of the cryptocurrency business, Chalom became a staunch supporter of cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Even during the downturn of the cryptocurrency market in 2022, he still stated: "Although cryptocurrencies have experienced a winter, their market value remains as high as trillions of dollars. We see that the accelerated development of these technologies has created opportunities and improved efficiency."