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Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund bets on ETHZilla, while Thiel-staked BitMine announces $24.5 billion fundraise

Spot ethereum ETFs trading in the US saw for the first time on Monday daily inflows exceeding the $1 billion mark.

8/12/25 10:05AM

Ethereum is attempting to overtake its all-time high price as its ongoing rally intensifies and institutional bets pile up.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund acquired a 7.5% stake in ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla Corporation, a rebrand of 180 Life Sciences, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission signed by Thiel on Monday. Shares of the company have skyrocketed, increasing over 65% on the news.

ETHZilla announced holding a total of 82,186 tokens, or $357.7 million at current prices, making it the fifth-largest ethereum corporate treasury firm, per StrategicETHReserve.xyz.

What else has ETHZilla been up to?

Making friends. He has lots of friends. https://t.co/Uh4PGeOlHc pic.twitter.com/LnZrVLTKcm
— ETHZilla (@ETHZilla_ATNF) August 12, 2025

“The most recently purchased ETH is expected to be held long-term and staked to Electric Capital’s own proprietary ethereum network strategies to generate yield,” a press release stated. The annualized staking yield for network validators stands at almost 3%, data from CoinDesk Indices shows.

BitMine sizing up

Thiel’s involvement in ETHZilla comes nearly one month after a different SEC filing showed that Founders Fund bought a 9.1% stake in BitMine Immersion Technologies, the largest ethereum treasury firm, which recently announced holding nearly $5 billion in tokens.

BitMine also filed a prospectus supplement with the SEC that would allow the company to raise up to $24.5 billion by offering shares of its common stock over time. That would increase its at-the-market equity offering by $20 billion, which represents a “5x increase in issuance capacity,” VanEck Head of Digital Assets Research Matthew Sigel said in a post on X.

BitMine aims to use the net proceeds from the sales for general corporate purposes, if any, as well as to fund acquisitions of businesses, assets, or technologies that complement its current business.

“We view our Ethereum treasury operations as the next phase of our business growth,” the Tuesday filing stated. “Our Treasury strategy will be focused on engaging in opportunity seeking activities with the goal of increasing the amount of ETH in the Treasury, including through staking, restaking, liquid staking and other decentralized finance activities.”

BitMine intends to accumulate 5% of ethereum’s total supply, which translates to roughly 6 million tokens worth $26.5 billion.

Spot ethereum ETFs make a new record

The moves come in the wake of spot ethereum ETFs in the US recording over $1 billion in daily inflows for the first time, with BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF and Fidelity’s Ethereum Fund accounting for about 90% of Monday’s total, per SoSoValue. The inflows into the ethereum investment vehicles were multiples higher than Monday’s inflows into spot bitcoin ETFs, which sat at $178 million.

The price of the second-largest cryptocurrency has jumped 5.2% in the last 24 hours and 32.7% this year to trade just under $4,400, closing in on the all-time high set in 2021. Ethereum’s climb in both time frames has outperformed Bitcoin’s.

Finally, one unidentified whale (0x395) scooped up 21,000 ethereum tokens worth $90.3 million in the early hours of Tuesday, bringing its on-chain portfolio to roughly $378 million, according to on-chain data pulled from blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.

Sage D. Young7h

Institutions continue to bet on ethereum amid “rock bottom” investor sentiment

Ethereum is trading below $2,000, a nearly 40% drawdown in the last 30 days and a 60% decline from its all-time high of $4,946 set in August 2025. Despite the pullback, institutions are still expanding their presence in the ethereum ecosystem.

BlackRock took a step toward listing its staked ethereum ETF, a Tuesday amendment filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows. The financial titan purchased $100,000 worth of seed shares where the proceeds will be used to purchase ethereum.
Ethereum’s largest treasury firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, announced on Tuesday that it acquired 45,759 tokens worth $90.1 million at current prices and increased its staking operations to 3 million tokens, bringing annualized staking revenue to $176 million, a press release stated.
Meanwhile, Harvard University’s endowment gained exposure to the second-largest cryptocurrency for the first time by purchasing 3.9 million million shares of BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF, worth around $86.8 million, per an SEC filing. Simultaneously, the Harvard Management Company sold about 1.5 million shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust, decreasing its stake by 21%.

The changes in institutional exposure to ethereum comes as investor sentiment is at “rock bottom,” according to BitMine Chairman Tom Lee, reminiscent of the forlornness during the 2018 crypto winter and 2022 November lows amid the collapse of the now bankrupt exchange FTX.

“Crypto has remained weak since the ‘price shock’ and massive deleveraging seen on October 10th. For us at Bitmine, we cannot control the price of Ethereum, and the company is acquiring ETH regardless of price trend, as the long-term outlook for Ethereum remains outstanding,” Lee said in a statement.

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Logan Paul sells ultrarare “Pokémon” card to AJ Scaramucci in a record deal

On Sunday, Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator “Pokémon” card for a record $16.5 million to AJ Scaramucci, son of former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.

The sale price is more than triple what Paul paid to acquire the card five years ago, nearly $5.3 million, a world record at the time. Since then, many of the trading cards have skyrocketed in value, outpacing baseball cards and even Meta.

The sale has drawn controversy in the crypto industry, as Paul had announced in 2022 that the card would be tokenized and listed on his digital collectibles platform, Liquid Marketplace. Since then, the platform has since been accused of “multi-layered fraud in the crypto asset sector,” according to a 2024 filing from Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission.

“I had originally offered to sell up to 51% of the Illustrator on Liquid Marketplace but ultimately only 5.4% of the card was sold for about $270k in the Summer of 2022 to fractional owners,” Paul wrote on social media.

“In May 2024, I bought the card back for the same price it was sold for per the terms of LM and made funds available for users to withdraw. I was told that those funds were available to be withdrawn for approximately a year after being deposited in LM users’ accounts,” Paul added.

Fractional Pikachu Illustrator holders watching Logan Paul sell the card that they own for $16 million dollars. pic.twitter.com/b117AOENAm
— Bold (@boldleonidas) February 16, 2026

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Bitcoin struggles to reach $70,000 as it heads for worst Q1 since 2018

If bitcoin ends February in the red, it will be its fifth consecutive monthly loss, and one analyst says bitcoin could “revert to $10,000.”

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Three Gemini top executives leave in “big shakeup,” shares plummet

Gemini Space Station, the crypto firm the Winklevoss brothers founded, announced it will be parting ways with three executives, COO Marshall Beard, CFO Dan Chen, and CLO Tyler Meade, effective today, according to a February 17 form 8-K filing. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart deemed the announcement “a big shakeup.”

In addition, Beard resigned from his role as a member of the company’s board of directors.

Shares were down over 13% following the news and are down 35% year to date.

The announcement comes on the heels of the firm’s September IPO and amid an overall downturn in crypto, which is taking a toll on several firms.

Gemini said it does not intend to appoint a successor COO at this time. Kate Freedman will become interim general counsel.

“Many of the duties previously performed by Mr. Beard, including revenue-generating responsibilities, will be assumed by Cameron Winklevoss in addition to his existing responsibilities,” the filing reports.

Meanwhile, Danijela Stojanovic, the firm’s chief accounting officer, will be interim CFO.

Earlier this month, the company slashed 25% of its workforce and shuttered operations in the United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia, per Bloomberg.

The company also pre-announced its 2025 earnings results, expecting net revenue to be between $165 million and $175 million as compared to $141 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. It expects an adjusted loss before tax of between $257 million and $267 million.