Shares of SharpLink Gaming (SBET) slipped 30% in early trading Monday, giving back a small bit of last week’s 2,000% surge.
The historic move higher — the stock moving from less than $3 to above $100 at one point — came following news that Sharplink was raising $450 million to launch an ether ETH treasury strategy, with ether co-founder Joseph Lubin to join the company board as chairman.
The company Monday morning announced the closing of that fundraising.
SharpLink sold 69 million shares to raise the capital. Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Martin Shkreli last week noted that most of those shares can’t be freely traded yet. “The 69 million shares issued are subject to a registration rights agreement, which [won’t] be effective for months. Those shares cannot be traded–only the 2 million.”
When a company issues new stock through a private placement, those shares often come with a restriction — they can’t be resold on public markets until the company files and clears paperwork with regulators. That process, called registering the shares, can take months. In the meantime, the thin pool of tradable shares can lead to volatile price swings.
In this case, SharpLink’s public float — the number of shares investors can actually buy or sell — is still very small. That low float may have helped fuel last week’s eye-popping rally as traders scrambled to get in. Now, with the surprise of a massive capital raise and new leadership from a crypto heavyweight, the stock is recoiling, but so far only a bit.
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