By Sander Lutz
2 min read
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is backing yet another Ethereum treasury company—and the company’s stock has tripled in price on the development.
According to a recent SEC filing, Thiel and related entities he manages purchased a 7.5% stake in 180 Life Sciences, a biotech company once focused on researching inflammatory diseases that recently pivoted to stockpiling Ethereum and rebranded to “ETHZilla."
After word of Thiel’s investment circulated Tuesday, the company’s stock exploded, more than tripling in value in a matter of hours. It closed the day trading at $10.24, up nearly 207% from its close at $3.34 on Monday afternoon.
Just weeks ago, Thiel and the venture capital firm he co-founded, Founders Fund, bought a 9.1% stake in another publicly traded company that has gone all in on buying up as much Ethereum as possible: BitMine.
That company, which previously focused on Bitcoin mining, has now accumulated over $5 billion worth of ETH, and plans to raise more than $20 billion to keep growing that industry-leading stash.
Thiel and his venture funds have been deeply involved in crypto for years, backing numerous blockchain ventures ranging from centralized exchanges including Bullish and Bitpanda, to entire networks like Ethereum layer-2 Layer N, to prediction market Polymarket.
Thiel, a PayPal and Palantir co-founder, has long been a major funder of far-right wing political candidates, and has played a crucial role in shaping the tech policy of the current Trump administration.
It was Thiel who first introduced Vice President JD Vance, one of his former employees, to Trump in 2021. Thiel’s longtime friend and business partner, David Sacks, currently serves as the president’s AI and crypto czar; Michael Kratsios, Thiel’s former chief of staff, heads the White House’s Office of Science and Technology.
The second Trump administration has aggressively pursued policies favorable to the crypto industry since January, including those that have hastened the integration of digital assets with traditional financial markets.
An executive order signed by the president last week, for example, greenlit the ability for 401(k) accounts to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies. Specifically, it permitted them to invest in actively managed investment vehicles investing in digital assets.
Thiel's interest in Ethereum and its co-founder Vitalik Buterin stretches back more than a decade, as Founders Fund awarded Buterin a $100,000 grant in 2014, helping enable development on the protocol.
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