SharpLink Gaming Inc ( SBET ) shares are trading lower, pulling back from a strong surge last week. The company on Monday announced the completion of a $425 million private placement.

What Happened: SharpLink Gaming ( SBET ) announced the closing of a $425 million private placement led by Consensys Software and other investors. The transaction enables the company to adopt ETH, the native asset of the Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) blockchain, as its primary treasury reserve asset, while continuing to focus on core business operations.

Joseph Lubin, founder and CEO of Consensys and co-founder of Ethereum, became chairman of the company’s board upon closing of the transaction.

“We believe that this is a powerful partnership combining SharpLink’s deep capital markets experience with Consensys’ leadership in both technological innovation and its role in building the Ethereum ecosystem,” said Rob Phythian, CEO of SharpLink.

The news comes after SharpLink shares soared several hundred percent last week after the company announced plans to adopt an Ethereum treasury strategy. Even with Monday’s pullback, the stock is still up more than 600% over the past week.

“This partnership with SharpLink represents more than just a financial milestone: it reflects the growing recognition across capital markets that programmable assets like ETH play an important role today in how value, trust, and financial systems are structured globally,” Lubin said.

“I am pleased to join as Sharplink’s Chairman of the Board of Directors in adopting Ethereum’s open, secure, and scalable infrastructure, which is already being used across institutional and decentralized applications.”   

SharpLink is considered a low-float stock with just 659,596 shares available for public trading, according to Benzinga Pro. The company also had a market cap of approximately $53.5 million as of Friday’s close. Low-float, micro-cap stocks tend to be very volatile, which may help explain some of the extreme volatility over the past week.

SBET Price Action: SharpLink Gaming ( SBET ) shares were down 38.1% at $47.49 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro.