Crypto financing firm ETHZilla said in a filing with U.S. regulators that it sold a few of its Ether holdings to repay outstanding convertible notes amid a general market downturn.
The company announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission the sale of 24,291 Ether (ETH) for $74.5 million at a median price of $3,068.69 per token, leaving about 69,800 ETH on its balance sheet as of Friday.
The company said it expects to make use of all or a significant slice of the proceeds to repay its outstanding convertible senior secured notes.
ETHZilla rebranded from 180 Life Sciences Corp on July 29, switching from biotech to an Ether-focused investment strategy. By then, shares of the previous biotech company had fallen greater than 99.9% since its IPO in 2020.
The news comes after ETHZilla announced two acquisitions in December, namely a 20% fully diluted stake in automotive finance AI startup Karus and a 15% stake in digital home lender Zippy.
The former biotech company's stock ended Monday's trading session down 8.7% and is down greater than 65% year-to-date, in keeping with data from Google Finance.
Source: Google Finance
Digital asset treasuries reposition themselves as prices fall
In September, Cointelegraph reported that publicly traded firms have significantly increased their Bitcoin (BTC) exposure this 12 months. Data from BitcoinTreasuries.NET shows that greater than 190 publicly traded firms now hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, with total holdings accounting for greater than 5% of circulating Bitcoin supply in September.
Ether has estimated similar demand from investors. According to data from CoinGecko, 27 public firms collectively hold about 6 million ETH, which also accounts for about 5% of the token's circulating supply.
Ether Treasury holdings. Source: CoinGecko
As Bitcoin retreats from its Oct. 6 record high of $126,000 and weakness extends to altcoins including Ether, some digital asset treasury firms are selling assets to shore up their balance sheets.
In late October, Ether finance firm FG Nexus began selling its coins to fund a stock buyback program, liquidating 10,922 ETH and a separate debt draw to speed up buybacks. The proceeds were used to support the repurchase of roughly 3.4 million shares at a median price of roughly $3.45 per share.
In November, Sequans Communications announced that it had paid off 50% of its outstanding convertible notes with the proceeds from the sale of 970 Bitcoin. The transaction reduced total debt to $94.5 million and reduced the corporate's Bitcoin holdings from 3,234 BTC to 2,264 BTC.
On Friday, Strategy, the primary publicly traded company to adopt a Bitcoin treasury strategy, announced that it sold 4.535 million Class A shares between December 15 and December 21, raising $747.8 million in money reserves because it weathers the crypto downturn.
