Former biotech firm pivots to crypto accumulation vehicle with $419M in ETH holdings.
ETHZilla Corporation, formerly 180 Life Sciences Corp., on Monday, Aug. 18, launched its new brand and Ethereum (ETH) treasury strategy – marking a pivot from biotechnology to Ether accumulation – while beginning trading on the Nasdaq under the new ticker ETHZ.
The Palm Beach–based company disclosed that it has acquired 94,675 ETH at an average price of $3,902.20 – worth about $411 million at ETH’s current price of $4,342 – alongside $187 million in cash equivalents, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant. The ETHZ stock closed at $7.41, up 5.26% on the day.
The rebrand comes amid accelerating on-chain treasury activity as more traditional finance (TradFi) firms increasingly accumulate digital assets as part of their treasury strategies. Firms are especially looking at ETH to bolster their treasuries because of its yield opportunities over Bitcoin (BTC).
ETHZilla’s rebrand follows a $565 million fundraising effort with participation from over 60 institutional and crypto-native investors such as Electric Capital, Polychain, and GSR. Several prominent crypto founders are also investors, including Sreeram Kannan, founder of Eigenlayer; Mike Silagadze, founder of Ether.fi; Danny Ryan, Grant Hummer, and Vivek Raman, co-founders of Etherealize; and Tarun Chitra, founder of Gauntlet.
“Today, we are embracing our identity as ETHZilla and our commitment to developing a market-leading strategy that seeks to bring the value of Ethereum to investors in the public markets,” said McAndrew Rudisill, Executive Chairman. “We are launching this new brand and our new treasury strategy with significant interest from the market and valuable partnerships with prominent Ethereum ecosystem founders and leaders.”
The company said Electric Capital will serve as its external asset manager with plans to deploy a yield-generating strategy aimed at outperforming traditional ETH staking, as well as a mix of staking, lending, liquidity provisioning, and private agreements.
Recently, staked ETH hit a new all-time high, signaling growing long-term confidence in the network. As of this week, more than 35.7 million ETH – worth nearly $154 billion – is locked in Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake system, representing about 30% of the total supply, according to BeaconChain. However, it’s worth noting that a significant number of stakers are also queuing to exit as ETH trades near its all-time high.
Source: https://thedefiant.io/news/tradfi-and-fintech/ethzilla-rebrands-with-ethereum-treasury-strategy-begins-trading-on-nasdaq
