Publicly-Traded Ether Capital Begins Staking an Ethereum 2.0 Node

The Toronto-based company, whose business model centers around building for Ethereum and the Web 3 ecosystem, made the announcement on Tuesday, Dec 1.

Crypto analysts believe the move signals the entry of institutional investment into Ethereum, with a possible knock-on effect of strengthening the DeFi ecosystem and boosting the underlying asset price.

Background on Ether Capital Corp

The company, which trades on Toronto’s NEO stock exchange under the ticker ETHC, describes its central objective as becoming “the central business and investment hub for the Ethereum and Web 3 ecosystem.”

Its business model revolves around holding ETH and making strategic investments in projects and protocols that leverage the Ethereum blockchain.

As of Aug 2020, the dollar value of the company’s stated ETH holdings was $16.7 million. At current prices, the same holdings would be worth roughly $23.7 million.

According to its Q2 financial report, the firm earned $0.15 per common share and experienced a 271.4% year-to-date (YTD) stock performance, rising from $0.24 in Jan 2020 to $1.04 at press time.

Ethereum 2.0 Staking Is a Go

According to the official announcement, the company has made the minimum 32 ETH deposit for an ETH 2.0 blockchain stake, worth approximately $19,020 at press time. Consequently, it’s now running a single validating node bonded to the deposit.

The company also revealed that it’s partnering with blockchain services provider Staked to run the node. Quoted in the announcement, Ether Capital CEO Brian Mosoff said:

“Once we see the Ethereum 2.0 blockchain running in a stable fashion over a period of time and are able to fully understand and mitigate applicable risks, Ether Capital intends to make a more substantial commitment of its Ether balance to staking.”

The long-awaited launch of the ETH 2.0 Beacon Chain took place today (Dec 1), with data from the new Beacon Chain explorer showing 870,000 ETH already staked. This significantly exceeds the minimum 524,000 ETH needed to launch the network.

Despite the optimism surrounding the launch, including a brief ETH price rally above $600, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin pointed out that network scaling is unlikely to happen for almost another year.

On Nov 19, BeInCrypto reported on Buterin’s Reddit AMA where the Ethereum frontman explained that a merger of the mainnet and the Beacon Chain was unfeasible until November 2021 at the earliest.

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