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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 11:05AM

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. Young4/2/26

Solana drops to price not seen since February as Drift exploit rattles sentiment

Solana has historically seen its largest price declines on Thursdays, and today is no exemption as the crypto industry reels from the over $270 million exploit that occurred yesterday on Drift, a trading venue native to the solana blockchain.

The price of solana has decreased 5.5% to around $78, a level not seen since February, data from CoinGecko shows.

Drift was one of the largest protocols on the solana network by total value locked, which now sits at nearly $245 million. The total value locked on solana has shrunk by nearly $1 billion since the incident, per DefiLlama.

Exploit likely involved from social engineering

The attack, which has turned into a wider contagion event, is unsettling for those in the industry. It did not come from a bug in the protocol’s smart contracts or programs. “Humans remain the bottleneck,” Mert Mumtaz, cofounder and CEO of solana development firm Helius, said in response to the incident.

The exploit involved unauthorized transaction approvals likely facilitated through social engineering. The sophisticated operation “appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution,” the team said on Thursday.

Omer Goldberg, founder of risk management firm Chaos Labs, added, “The DeFi [decentralized finance] ecosystem continues to grow in scale, but not in operational security.”

“Protocols now have custody of hundreds of millions in user funds while depending on admin key setups that would be considered unacceptable in TradFi for a fraction of that AUM [assets under management],” Goldberg wrote on X.

“Most hacks come down to the simple act of one clicking a link they shouldn’t have clicked. These are picking up in pace, be extra cautious clicking any link or file,” continued Helius’ Mumtaz.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

4/2/26

Optimism around bitcoin’s trajectory is fading following Trump’s address, as whales continue to offload

Bitcoin has been stuck in a narrow range for the past few weeks, seemingly incapable of breaking in either direction.

People walk past an advertisement feature Donald Trump with...

$270M

Sage D. Young4/1/26

April 1 is known as a day for funny pranks. However, a popular trading venue on the solana blockchain, Drift, is suffering from an ongoing exploit today, on-chain data shows.

“Drift Protocol is experiencing an active attack. Deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. We are coordinating with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the incident. This is not an April Fools joke,” the team said on social media at 2:58 p.m. ET.

TheBlock reported the exploit is at least $200 million, while blockchain sleuth Lookonchain estimates the figure is $270 million. It could be even more. At this range, the Wednesday hack is among the largest ever, according to the exploits ranking dashboard from Rekt.

Drift’s exploit is concerning for those within the crypto industry. Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corp. allocates a portion of its balance to on-chain strategies to generate yield, including Drift, though the firm announced it had no exposure to the protocol and “was not impacted by an alleged exploit affecting the platform,” per its press release.

Drift also provides to qualified users sACRED, a derivative token of a tokenized feeder fund that is linked to Apollo Global Management Inc.’s traditional Diversified Credit Fund.

Sage D. Young

4/1/26

Google Research: Quantum computers a “serious threat” to 6.7 million bitcoin, including Satoshi’s coins

“Their fast-clock architecture could crack a private key in 9 minutes, while bitcoin blocks take 10 minutes on average. That changes the threat model entirely.”