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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.

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Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter.

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions.

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, has put its IPO plans on hold

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

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SEC and CFTC issue new guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto assets

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, issued an interpretation clarifying how federal securities law applies to crypto assets, a first step toward developing a clearer regulatory framework.

The interpretive guidance introduces a token taxonomy for different types of cryptocurrencies, with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins adding that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”

Examples of a digital commodity, “a crypto asset that is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a crypto system that is ‘functional,’” include:

Aptos, avalanche, bitcoin, bitcoin cash, cardano, chainlink, dogecoin, ethereum, hedera, litecoin, polkadot, shiba inu, solana, stellar, tezos, and XRP.

The guidance also includes definitions of digital collectibles (such as NFTs), stablecoins, digital tools, and digital securities (such as tokenized real-world assets and stocks).

This is a monumental step in the mainstream adoption of the industry and clears a hurdle in how crypto can operate going forward, according to David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund. “This will allow new token designs with the confidence that their existence does not require registration with the SEC, etc.,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Despite the clarification efforts from the two organizations, the market capitalization of the crypto industry has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours as each of the tokens mentioned in the guidance are trading lower in the period, data from CoinGecko shows.

The joint agency action also complements congressional efforts to turn a crypto market structure framework into law. With the goal of providing regulations on the offer and sale of digital commodities, the CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives last year and is now sitting in the Senate.

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The analysts’ bear-case scenario is $57,537, based on “recessionary macro-factors, especially weak equity markets,” which could cause ETF flows to stall.