Ethereum-focused treasury company ETHZilla said it has sold roughly $40 million worth of ether to fund ongoing share repurchases, a maneuver aimed at closing what it calls a “significant discount to NAV.” In a press statement on Monday, the company disclosed that since Friday, October 24, it has bought back about 600,000 common shares for approximately $12 million under a broader authorization of up to $250 million, and that it intends to continue buying while the discount persists.
The company framed the buybacks as balance-sheet arbitrage rather than a strategic retreat from its core Ethereum exposure. “We are leveraging the strength of our balance sheet, including reducing our ETH holdings, to execute share repurchases,” chairman and CEO McAndrew Rudisill said, adding that ETH sales are being used as “cash” while common shares trade below net asset value. He argued the transactions would be immediately accretive to remaining shareholders.
The market-structure logic is straightforward: when a digital-asset treasury trades below the value of its coin holdings and cash, buying back stock with “coin-cash” can, in theory, collapse the discount and lift NAV per share. But the optics are contentious inside crypto because the mechanism requires selling the underlying asset—here, ETH—to purchase equity, potentially weakening the very treasury backing that investors originally sought.
Beyond the buyback, a retail-driven storyline has rapidly formed around the stock. Business Insider reported that Dimitri Semenikhin—who recently became the face of the Beyond Meat surge—has targeted ETHZilla, saying he purchased roughly 2% of the company at what he views as a 50% discount to modified NAV. He has argued that the market is misreading ETHZilla’s balance sheet because it still reflects legacy biotech results rather than the current digital-asset treasury model.
The company’s own messaging emphasizes the discount-to-NAV lens rather than a change in strategy. ETHZilla told investors it would keep buying while the stock trades below asset value and highlighted a goal of shrinking lendable supply to blunt short-selling pressure.
That is the “death spiral” scenario skeptics warn about when the treasury asset doubles as the company’s signal of conviction.
At press time, ETH traded at $4,156.
