Former oncology biotech company Leap Therapeutics (LPTX), which earlier this month raised $58.9 million in funding led by Winklevoss Capital to become a digital treasury company, announced its $50 million purchase of Zcash. .
Additionally, the company will change its name to Cypherpunk Technologies and begin trading on Thursday under the new symbol CYPH, a Wednesday press release said.
ZEC, the only cryptocurrency that has risen in value in recent weeks, has more than doubled since Leap’s purchases, rising another 12.2% in the last 24 hours to $523.
LPTX shares rose 369% on Wednesday following news of the profitable investment.
Digital asset treasuries follow a strategy of raising funds by selling equity and debt to accumulate cryptocurrencies, a playbook pioneered by Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) with bitcoin. They became ubiquitous this year when dozens of public companies announced a turnaround, but the frenzy has cooled considerably in recent months as their share prices fell in many cases below the net asset value of their digital asset holdings.
“The recent weak performance of digital asset treasury companies is due to PIPEs dominated by short-term mercenary capital,” Will McEvoy, chief investment officer at Cypherpunk, said in a statement. “We have taken a different path by creating a syndicate of value-aligned investors who believe in the long-term importance of Zcash and privacy to the United States and the world.”
Zcash is designed to offer users greater privacy than major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. . Cypherpunk executives saw ZEC as a protection against financial systems controlled by surveillance.
