Former biotech company ETHZilla (ETHZ) is expanding its efforts in real asset markets by acquiring a 15% stake in digital housing lender Zippy to offer manufactured home loans on the network. This transaction marks the company’s second acquisition in a week.
According to Wednesday announcementETHZilla will pay $5 million in cash and $16.1 million in shares for a 15% stake in Zippy, a US lender founded in 2021 that provides loans for manufactured homes via a digital platform.
The companies plan to connect Zippy’s lending and AI-powered systems with ETHZilla’s tokenization stack for onchain distribution of manufacturing chattel loans, including potential forward sales to institutional investors.
As part of the transaction, ETHZilla will gain a seat on Zippy’s board of directors and secure a 36-month exclusivity period requiring Zippy to operate its entire blockchain infrastructure, digital asset issuance and tokenization through ETHZilla platforms.
ETHZilla, the sixth-largest Ether Treasury (ETH) company according to CoinGecko data, said the investment is based on a broader entry into real asset (RWA) markets.
The announcement comes a week after ETHZilla acquired a 20% fully diluted stake in auto finance startup Karus for $10 million in cash and stock.
As of this writing, ETHZilla’s share price is down approximately 10%, according to data from Yahoo Finance.
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Treasury stocks are struggling with piercing declines
Several public companies that adopted Ether as an on-balance sheet asset this year saw their share prices sharply reverse as the token’s price fell from its peak, ETHZilla among them.
ETHZilla, formerly 180 Life Sciences Corp, announced on July 29 its transition to treasury company Ether. Its shares rose from an opening price of $45 that day to a closing price of $107 on August 13. However, since then the stock has fallen approximately 91%, commercial about $10 at this writing.
SharpLink Gaming launched its Ethereum treasury strategy in May with a $425 million private placement in which Consensys was an investor, coinciding with the appointment of Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as CEO.
The company’s shares rose more than 130% on the news to $79.21 on May 29, but have since fallen sharply and settled at around $11.77 on Wednesday, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Bitmine Immersion, the Ether treasury company run by Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee, has also struggled in recent months. Its shares hit an all-time high of $135 in July and have remained there since fallen to about $40 at this writing.
In August, Komodo Platform’s chief technology officer Kadan Stadelmann told Cointelegraph that companies implementing ETH treasury strategies face structural risks and warned that a market downturn could force liquidation and escalate selling pressure on the token.
Ether has fallen from an all-time high of $4,946.05 on August 24 and now transactions according to CoinGecko data it is $3,365.
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