加密货币与区块链：ETH DATS：去中心化金融领域的行业领袖经济；启动BMNR（增持）和SBET（增持）

ETH DATS: Corporate Leaders in Decentralized FinanceEconomies; Initiate BMNR (OW) and SBET (OW) We are initiating coverage of Bitmine Immersion Technology (BMNR) with an OWrating and 12-month PT of $39 and Sharplink Gaming (SBET) with an OW ratingand 12-month PT of $15.Both BMNR and SBET are Ethereum digital asset treasury(DAT) companies. Over the past year, they have been large buyers of ETH, with BMNRaccumulating a stake of 4.11m ETH and SBET accumulating a stake of 864k ETH. Research Analysts: Brett Knoblauch, CFA212-610-2221Brett.Knoblauch@cantor.com ETH, the second-largest digital asset, was the first general purpose smart contractplatform. ETH held its initial coin offering (ICO) in July 2014 (at $0.31) and officiallylaunched in July 2015. ETH has undergone many improvements throughout the years,all of which were to help improve the underlying functionality of the blockchain. Webelieve the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has taken the approach of sacrificing fees andprioritizing security in order to help accelerate growth. This is similar to the early daysof Uber (UBER, OW, covered by D. Mathivanan), when it sacrificed profitability to winmarket share. As it stands today, ETH has the most liquidity on its blockchain, the moststablecoins on its blockchain, the largest total value locked (TVL) in DeFi, and the mostdevelopers building on its blockchain. Gareth Gacetta212-915-1251Gareth.Gacetta@cantor.com While we can make the argument that ETH's technology is not the best amongstall blockchains that have reached mainnet, it undoubtedly has the one of thebest security frameworks. While younger competitors have focused on technicalcapabilities first, and later worked to address security, we believe ETH's foundation(EF) in security serves as a differentiator, particularly when it comes to enterprise andinstitutional adoption. We see the EF constantly attempting to address the technicalaspects (throughput, finality, data availability, etc), which we believe will close thetechnical gap with competitors over the medium- and long-term. Between total value locked in DeFi on ETH, on ETH layer-2 blockchains, and stablecoinsthat reside on ETH, the ETH blockchain currently secures more than $256bn in assets.We believe investors should view ETH as the underlying collateral securing the newinternet. As stablecoins in circulation continue to grow, as the L2 ecosystem continuesto grow, and as real world assets (RWAs) get increasingly tokenized, we expect ETH tobe a beneficiary, as we see the lion's share of these assets residing on ETH. As thathappens, the total value of assets that relies on ETH's security will increase, and webelieve ETH performance will be correlated to this trend. We believe ETH's tokenomics have an advantage over BTC. BTC, which we see as beinga global reserve currency, has a hard cap on supply. New supply is issued from blockrewards, but miners need to be incentivized to mine. As block rewards get cut in half,BTC transaction fees will need to increase. With BTC being a reserve currency andits blockchain not technically capable of supporting a large amount of transactions,it is difficult to see transaction fees materially increasing to offset declining blocksubsidies. To counteract this, network hash will decline to where mining is profitable. Please see important disclosures, analyst certifications, and information regarding the status of non-US analysts in the disclosure section of thisreport found on pages 66 - 68. The downside of this is that smaller network hash means greater security risk toBitcoin. With ETH, which transitioned to proof of stake (PoS) in 2021, its y/y change insupply has since hovered between -2% and 2%, and we expect future EF improvementsto further support deflationary trends. SharpLink Gaming (SBET, OW, $15 PT). SBET has, in our mind, an extremelyexperienced management team when it comes to crypto, and more specifically, theETH ecosystem. We expect this crypto and DeFi experience to showcase itself throughinnovative ETH deployment strategies that will ultimately allow SBET to organicallygrow ETH at a faster rate. At present, SBET is trading at an mNAV of 0.77x, or an 23%discount to the amount of ETH it owns. With SBET earning ~450 ETH a week ($60m+ annualized), we see this discount as being an attractive entry point. Investors getexposure to ETH at a significant discount and with it, get access to a very DeFi nativemanagement team that we believe will maximize the amount of ETH it can generate. Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR, OW, $39 PT). When it comes to DATs, biggeris better. The DAT flywheel is capital raising, and outside MSTR (OW), no other DAThas been able to raise as much money to buy digital assets as BMNR. This dynamichas allowed BMNR stock to be extremely liquid, with it typically being one of the top40 most traded stocks on a daily basis in the entire US market. With a ETH positionnow totaling over $12bn and staking rewards run-rating north of $350m,