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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.

Sage D. Young

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. 

“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.

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XRP ETFs have now crossed $1 billion in assets since the funds launched, according to SoSoValue, which shows total assets of $1.18 billion.

In September, the SEC approved generic listing standards, which paved the way for speedier listings and opened the floodgates for these products, and shortly after, Rex-Osprey launched the first spot XRP ETF available in the US.

Canary followed suit in November, launching an ETF trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker XRPC, which saw a record $58.5 million in trading volume on its first day. It’s the largest XRP ETF in the US, with $342 million in assets.

Grayscale, Bitwise, and Franklin Templeton also launched their own XRP ETFs in November. On December 11, 21Shares joined the XRP fund party.

It’s a noteworthy green shoot in the crypto space, as bitcoin and its ETFs have struggled, and XRP itself is down nearly 15% over the past month.

Jake Hanley, managing director and senior portfolio specialist at Teucrium Investment Advisors — which launched the first-ever XRP-based ETF in April, the 2x Long Daily XRP ETF — told Sherwood News that he is not surprised to see this level of interest in the XRP ETFs.

“We have long held that XRP and the Ripple ecosystem present a unique investment case among crypto assets. Crossing the $1 billion mark is yet another signal of the significant vote of confidence investors have in this increasingly important asset and ecosystem,” Hanley said.

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New bitcoin AfterDark ETF will be bitcoin at night, Treasurys by day

Tidal Trust II submitted form N-1A with the SEC to register a bitcoin ETF designed to systemically capture the cryptocurrency’s overnight return profile, a time window that delivered a significant portion of bitcoin’s upside last year.

The Nicholas Bitcoin and Treasuries AfterDark ETF provides long bitcoin exposure during US overnight hours, from the closing bell until the following morning’s market open, when the fund intends to unwind its positions, according to a document filed with the SEC on Tuesday. 

To gain that exposure, the ETF may use a number of methods, including bitcoin futures contracts, US-listed ETFs, or exchange-traded options on such bitcoin underlying funds. When the market is open and daytime trading is active, the fund’s portfolio will consist of US Treasury securities and other cash equivalents. 

In 2024, most of bitcoin’s gains occurred after-hours, senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas reported:

The AfterDark ETF filing comes as bitcoin crossed $94,000 on Tuesday, rising 4.5% in the last 24 hours. Even though spot bitcoin ETFs saw nearly $60.5 million in outflows on Monday, the investment vehicles have a cumulative net inflow of $57.6 billion, per SoSoValue.

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