ETHZilla Invests $21 Million in Zippy to Tokenize Manufactured Home Loans

ETHZilla Corporation (Nasdaq: ETHZ) has acquired a 15% fully diluted stake in Zippy, a digital lending platform specializing in manufactured home loans, the company said Wednesday, Dec. 10.

The transaction, valued at $21 million, includes $5 million in cash, $14 million in ETHZilla common stock issued to Zippy, and $2.1 million in stock issued to certain individual Zippy shareholders, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

ETHZilla will also appoint a director to Zippy’s board of directors as part of the partnership. ETHZ is currently trading at $9.90, down 11.3% on the day, according to Yahoo Finance.

Under the agreement, Zippy will continue to originate and service manufactured home loans, while ETHZilla will provide the blockchain infrastructure to tokenize the loans as real-world assets (RWAs) on the Ethereum network. RWAs are currently one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto, with a total asset value of $18.2 billion, up around 215% since the start of the year.

The initiative aims to provide institutional investors with on-chain access to the $14 billion manufactured housing finance market, according to a press release viewed by The Defiant.

The company expects to earn revenue by facilitating on-chain distribution of Zippy’s loan assets through decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, John Kristoff, SVP Head of Investor Relations at ETHZilla, told The Defiant. The manufactured home loans will be converted into Ethereum L2-based tokens “designed to meet institutional compliance and reporting standards,” Kristoff added.

ETHZilla Corporation, formerly 180 Life Sciences, rebranded in August to focus on Ethereum treasury accumulation and DeFi strategies. The company is currently the sixth-largest digital asset treasury (DAT) holder of Ether (ETH), with 94,030 ETH valued at approximately $314 million, per CoinGecko.

The move marked a big shift from biotechnology to crypto, supported by a $565 million fundraising round with participation from institutional and crypto-native investors, including Electric Capital, Polychain, and GSR.