Peter Thiel zeroes out ETHZilla, trading ETH treasury companies has become even more realistic
An amended 13G/A posted on ETHZilla’s investor site on February 17 listed Peter Thiel and a Founders Fund-related vehicle with zero shares and 0.0% beneficial ownership.
The application also includes an “event date” of December 31, 2025, which sets the timing frame for what the document captures: a snapshot of beneficial ownership that arrives based on the compliance clock.
Bloomberg reports that Thiel and his Founders Fund have effectively exited the company entirely, completing a simple arc they’ve been building for months.
Back in August 2025, Palantir’s founders were key stakeholders. In our Schedule 13D filing, we reported 11,592,241 shares and 7.5% beneficial ownership as of the August 4 event date. The position has since been reduced. The revised proposal submitted on November 14th reported 928,389 shares as of September 30th, or 5.6%.
This sequence becomes even more compelling when you remember what ETHZilla was trying to express. It’s a public market attempt to bottle up the Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) playbook and funnel it into Ethereum, complete with a Nasdaq ticker and a Treasury story, aimed at investors who prefer a brokerage over a wallet.
Filing that turns rumors into numbers
The Feb. 17 amendment is the clearest version of a “full exit” the public market has offered so far, but shareholders appear to have already priced it in after Thiel’s 2025 sale. Since August of last year, ETHZ stock has fallen 95% from about $74 to just over $3.50.
The company was clearly under pressure beyond insider selling. In its January 2026 8-K, ETHZilla reported selling 3,965.83 ETH for $12.58 million at an average price of $3,173.67, revealing a balance of approximately 65,850 ETH. A month earlier, a much larger sale of approximately $74.5 million in ETH took place, related to debt pressures and a retreat from pure Treasury stance.
The company disclosed in its February 2026 8-K that it has redeemed all outstanding senior secured convertible notes and paid $516,148,000 in principal, $87,745,000 in redemption premium, and interest.
That’s the sound of expensive capital in a market that has begun to price without much patience with financial company structures.
All of this fits within a broader story being formed across categories.
That broader context gives Thiel’s 0.0% a different kind of weight, as crypto finance companies rely on share buybacks and leverage as stock prices fall.
Macro issues, carry looks thin, funding looks expensive
Treasury strategy will always exist within macro. During this brief stage of trading, the stock trades at a premium relative to the underlying cryptocurrency, and the financing fuels and feeds the loop itself. ETH has an additional layer as staking yield and derivative carry become inputs to the spreadsheet.
For now, these pieces of information serve as a modest cushion.
A public dashboard tracking ETH futures base shows annualized carry in the low single digits across maturities. Benchmarks for staking yields are also around the same level, with one index yielding around 2.8% per year.
When carry is thin, business decisions become more important. ETH sales are more important. The terms of the loan are more important. The terms of the stock issuance are more important. The market then begins to treat the ticker as an execution decision rather than a mere proxy.
Deals with treasury companies are ultimately based on the belief that public wrappers can hold volatile assets and remain stable as markets change. Thiel’s departure doesn’t explain why, but it certainly flags the end of the timeline.
There are three paths from here, a number indicating which path you are on.
This is useful for naming road junctions and connecting each junction to a small set of observable signals.
- One way is to restart the premium loop. ETH stabilizes, risk appetite returns, and treasury companies regain room to fund growth without shrinking core assets. Tellurium will show up on tax returns, Treasury deductions will be reduced, there will be cleaner financing, and the market will once again be willing to pay for exposure.
- The second path is a discount trap. The shares trade at a chronic discount to the underlying holdings, and the company sells portions of the pile to fund operations, acquisitions and debt repayments. This version progresses slowly and appears as a steady trickle of “financial update” calculations.
- The third pass is reflexive unwinding. The sharp decline in ETH will meet strict funding conditions, accelerate the forced sell-off, and the stock will begin to behave like a stress gauge. That version gets a lot of headlines and usually leaves a mark on the short period of time that the balance sheet action is repeated.
You can also use simple numerical frames to keep the focus on reality. ETHZilla revealed that approximately 65,850 ETH remains in January 2026 8-K. Previous disclosure tracking records 19,301,223 shares outstanding, which gives a rough way to convert ETH value into a “per share” intuition.
For 2,000 ETH, 65,850 ETH would be approximately $131.7 million in ETH value. Diversified over 19.3 million shares, ETH is worth approximately $6.80 per share before cash, debt, operating income, and other balance sheet items.
If ETH is $1,500, the rough number would be closer to $5.10. Once ETH reaches $3,000, it will rise to around $10.20. The important thing here is that sensitivities, small movements in ETH or small changes in funding conditions can quickly change the narrative.
Next thing to note, breadcrumbs to file so this doesn’t become a one-day meme.
Let’s start with your ETH balance. The next time ETHZilla updates its numbers in an 8-K or periodic report, direction and magnitude will be important.
Next, pay attention to the capital structure. The debt redemption disclosed in the February 2026 8-K comes at a hefty premium, and any alternative financing, equity issuance, or new structured product would indicate what kind of market access the company still has.
Next, monitor the surface area of your strategy. The more a company leans into adjacent bets and broader asset themes, the more the ticker becomes a view on management’s ability to maintain a consistent story under pressure. This tension is also reflected in the wording of the company’s prospectus regarding the sale of shares and shareholders.
Finally, always keep the macro dial in your sights. This is because it sets an upper limit on how easy this trade will be. Futures basis curves and staking yield levels are more than just trivia, they directly impact how a treasury firm’s strategy looks on paper and how it feels during a drawdown.
Many crypto stories end with atmosphere. This ends in a line item, and the line item displays 0.0%. Shields’ conviction for this Ethereum Treasury instrument didn’t last long, so the question becomes what does he know that other Ethereum investors don’t? Was it poor investor relations with ETHZilla or a broader issue with the business model?
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