In brief
- Biotech company Leap Therapeutics purchased 203,775.27 ZEC tokens at an average price of $245, one of the largest corporate bets on privacy-focused crypto.
- The firm has rebranded to Cypherpunk Technologies Inc. as part of its pivot to a digital asset treasury strategy, completing a $58.88 million private placement led entirely by VC firm Winklevoss Capital.
- Leap Theraputics’ digital asset holdings will complement its biotech business, according to a press release.
Nasdaq-listed Leap Therapeutics has rebranded to Cypherpunk Technologies Inc. as it pursues a digital asset strategy by accumulating ZEC, the native token of privacy coin Zcash.
The Cambridge-based biotechnology firm announced Wednesday it will deploy capital to initiate a digital asset strategy after securing a $58.88 million private placement led by Winklevoss Capital, the venture capital firm founded by Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, according to a press release shared with Decrypt.
The company has already purchased 203,775.27 ZEC at an average price of $245 per token using $50 million of the proceeds, and will begin trading under the new ticker symbol CYPH on Thursday.
Cypherpunk Technologies joins a growing list of public companies using crypto as a balance-sheet strategy, following Strategy’s Bitcoin playbook and similar treasury experiments across the corporate world.
Cypherpunk’s pivot focuses on Zcash, the largest privacy-focused crypto, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify transactions without revealing wallet addresses or amounts, unlike Bitcoin’s fully transparent ledger.
Zcash surged nearly tenfold in two months, peaking near $735 on Friday and triggering $51 million in short liquidations, before easing to about $464 early Wednesday, according to CoinGecko data, still 85% below its 2016 high of $3,191.
Douglas E. Onsi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cypherpunk Technologies, said the company’s digital-asset holdings will complement its biotech business while “creating long-term shareholder value through active participation in Zcash.”
The leadership shake-up accompanying the rebrand sees Khing Oei appointed Chairman, while Will McEvoy, a Principal at Winklevoss Capital, becomes Cypherpunk’s first-ever CEO and joins the board, effective Monday.
Oei is the founder and CEO of Treasury, a Netherlands-based Bitcoin treasury company that raised $147 million (€126 million) in September through a private round led by Winklevoss Capital and Nakamoto Holdings.
Other crypto treasuries faltered under “short-term, mercenary capital,” McEvoy noted, while Cypherpunk built a “value-aligned” investor base focused on the long-term importance of Zcash and privacy for the “United States and the world.”
Galaxy Digital research analyst Will Owens noted in a recent report that Zcash is gaining traction as an alternative to Bitcoin amid growing concerns about on-chain surveillance.
“Zcash’s advocates frame it as ‘encrypted Bitcoin,’ a return to cypherpunk principles that resonate amid widespread onchain surveillance,” Owens wrote, contrasting it with Bitcoin’s fully transparent transaction history.
The parent company of Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, recently filed to enter the prediction markets business and reported its first quarterly results as a public company following a September IPO.
Gemini reported a $159.5 million net loss in its Q1 earnings report, driven by IPO-related expenses and higher marketing costs, according to a shareholder letter sent Tuesday.
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