After promoting a good portion of its crypto stash over the previous months, Ethereum-focused treasury agency ETHZilla has now added jet engines to its steadiness sheet.
A Friday submitting to the U.S. Securities and Trade Fee (SEC) exhibits that the corporate purchased two CFM56-7B24 plane engines for $12.2 million by means of a newly fashioned subsidiary, ETHZilla Aerospace LLC.
The engines are at the moment leased to a significant airline, and ETHZilla employed Aero Engine Options to handle them in alternate for a month-to-month charge, in accordance with the doc. The deal features a buy-sell choice settlement the place both occasion can require the opposite to purchase or promote the engines for $3 million every upon lease expiration, offered the engines stay in correct situation.
Whereas the transfer could sound odd, for an ETH treasury firm, shopping for jet engines and leasing them to plane operators is a part of the conventional aerospace enterprise exterior the crypto world.
Airline operators lease jet engines as spares to make sure the planes can proceed to function with out disruption if their major engine fails. Corporations resembling AerCap, Willis Lease Finance Company, and SMBC Aero Engine Lease function on this house.
The aerospace enterprise can also be at the moment going through a big-engine provide squeeze, with IATA saying its airline members can be pressured to pay about $2.6 billion to lease further spare engines in 2025. The truth is, the worldwide plane engine leasing market is anticipated to develop from $11.17 billion in 2025 to $15.56 billion by 2031 at a 5.68% CAGR, in accordance with TechSci Analysis.
Tokenization pivot
The unusual maneuver comes as digital asset treasuries face rising stress amid crypto markets’ tumble over the previous months.
Many public companies that aggressively raised funds to build up tokens final yr now commerce properly beneath the web asset worth (NAV) of the crypto on their books, leaving little room to boost contemporary capital.
ETHZilla itself beforehand bought $40 million in ETH in October to fund a inventory buyback program, then offloaded one other $74.5 million in December to redeem excellent debt. In the meantime, its inventory has tumbled roughly 97% since its August peak.
Nonetheless, shopping for plane engines is likely to be a part of ETHZilla’s broader ambition to carry tokenized real-world belongings (RWAs) onchain.
In a December shareholder letter, the corporate outlined plans to tokenize belongings in partnership with Liquidity.io, a regulated broker-dealer and SEC-registered various buying and selling system (ATS). Earlier than that, ETHZilla took a 15% stake in Zippy, a lender centered on manufactured house loans, with plans to tokenize these loans as compliant, tradable devices. It additionally acquired a stake in auto finance platform Karus with plans to carry loans onchain.
“We’re constructing a scalable tokenization pipeline throughout asset courses with predictable money flows and international investor demand,” the agency stated in a Wednesday X put up. The corporate expects to listing the primary tokenized asset choices within the first quarter of the yr.
