Treasury company ETHZilla said in a filing with U.S. regulators that it sold part of its Ether holdings to pay off outstanding convertible notes amid the broader market downturn.
The company disclosed in filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission selling 24,291 Ether (ETH) for $74.5 million at an average price of $3,068.69 per token, leaving approximately 69,800 ETH on the balance sheet as of Friday.
The company said it expects to apply all or a substantial portion of the proceeds to retire its senior secured convertible notes.
On July 29, ETHZilla changed its name from 180 Life Sciences Corp, moving away from biotechnology towards an ether-focused investment strategy. By then, shares of the clinical-stage biotech company had fallen more than 99.9% since going public in 2020.
The news comes after ETHZilla announced two acquisitions in December, taking a 20% fully diluted stake in automotive artificial intelligence startup Karus and a 15% stake in digital housing lender Zippy.
According to Google Finance data, shares of this former biotechnology company closed the Monday trading session, falling by 8.7%, and since the beginning of the year they have fallen by over 65%.
Related: Metaplanet consents to the issue of shares paying dividends to foreign institutions
The position of digital treasuries changes as prices fall
In September, Cointelegraph reported that publicly traded companies had sharply increased their exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) this year. Data from BitcoinTreasuries.NET shows that over 190 publicly traded companies currently have Bitcoin on their balance sheets, with combined holdings exceeding 5% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply in September.
Ether has seen similar demand from investors. According to CoinGecko dataThe 27 public companies collectively hold approximately 6 million ETH, which is also approximately 5% of the token’s circulating supply.
Bitcoin retreats from October 6 record towering at $126,000 and weakness spreading to altcoins including Ether, some digital asset treasure companies are selling assets to shore up their balance sheets.
At the end of October, the treasury company Ether FG Nexus began its operations selling its coins to fund the share repurchase program, liquidating 10,922 ETH along with a separate debt incurrence to accelerate the repurchase. The proceeds were used to purchase approximately 3.4 million shares at an average price of approximately $3.45 per share.
In November, Sequans Communications he said redeemed 50% of its outstanding convertible debt using the proceeds from the sale of 970 Bitcoins. The transaction reduced total debt to $94.5 million and reduced the company’s Bitcoin holdings to 2,264 BTC from 3,234 BTC.
On Friday, Strategy, the first public company to adopt a Bitcoin treasury strategy, said it sold 4.535 million Class A shares between December 15 and 21, adding $747.8 million to its cash reserves amid the cryptocurrency crisis.
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