Digital asset treasury firms with a sole business of investing in tokens have fallen out of investor favor and how.
Billionaire entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies Peter Thiel’s venture arm has wiped its slate clean of ETHZilla, selling every last share of the ether-hoarding digital asset treasury firm by the end of the last year, fresh paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows.
Thiel’s Founders Fund now shows a big fat zero in ownership, down from a 7.5% stake in August last year.
ETHZilla, a crypto investment firm based in Palm Beach, mimics Michael Saylor’s bitcoin hoarding firm Strategy (MSTR). ETHZilla started as a failed biotech stock called 180 Life Sciences, before pivoting hard to Ethereum (ETH) treasury, amassing over 100,000 ETH tokens at its peak.
The fund, however, panicked as markets peaked in early October and $40 million in ether for buybacks, then $74.5 million more in December to reduce debt from convertible notes. According to Bloomberg, the firm is pivoting hard again, spinning out ETHZilla Aerospace to offer investors tokenized slices of leased jet engines.