BOLD CLAIM: Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund exits ETHZilla completely, wiping the slate clean of its ether-treasury bet by the end of 2025. And here’s what that means for the crypto investor landscape.
Peter Thiel’s venture arm, Founders Fund, has no remaining shares in the ether-treasury specialist ETHZilla as of year-end 2025, according to new filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The move marks a dramatic shift from a prior stake of 7.5% reported in August of the previous year.
ETHZilla, a Palm Beach–based crypto investment firm, built its reputation by concentrating on Ethereum-related treasury management, drawing comparisons to Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-focused Strategy (MSTR). The firm originally began life as a biotech stock venture—180 Life Sciences—but pivoted aggressively toward Ethereum holdings, amassing a peak of over 100,000 ETH tokens.
The pivot didn’t come without tension. As crypto markets hit their highs in early October, ETHZilla deployed about $40 million to buy back ETH, followed by an additional $74.5 million in December aimed at trimming debt tied to convertible notes. In late 2025, the firm indicated a broader strategic pivot as reported by Bloomberg, signaling a move away from its ETHZilla core and toward new ventures, including ETHZilla Aerospace, a vehicle designed to offer investors tokenized slices of leased jet engines.
What this signals for investors and markets:
- Confidence in token-treasury strategies may be fading as institutional eyes shift toward more diversified or asset-backed approaches.
- Big-name backers, once bullish on crypto treasury plays, can quickly retreat as risk appetites and liquidity needs change.
- The crypto ecosystem continues to evolve, with entities pivoting from token hoarding to tokenized assets and other financing structures.
For context on current market dynamics: Bitcoin has faced renewed questions about its ability to sustain gains above $70,000, and broader market indicators show stress without a clear capitulation bottom. At the same time, debates rage about quantum computing risks, controversial protocol improvements like BIP-110’s spam-reduction proposal, and shifting flows among institutional players.
Would you like to dive deeper into how institutional crypto treasury strategies work, or explore potential implications of ETHZilla’s pivot toward tokenized asset ventures like jet-engine leases?
Full coverage and related analysis are available in the linked article from Bloomberg and associated market reports.
