Ethzilla Moves Into Onchain Housing Finance With 15% Zippy Acquisition

The company’s second acquisition in a week brings manufactured-home chattel loans onchain as Ether treasury stocks continue to slide.

Former biotech company ETHZilla (ETHZ) is doubling down on its push into real-world asset markets, taking a 15% stake in digital housing lender Zippy to bring manufactured-home loans onchain. The deal marks the company’s second acquisition in a week.

According to Wednesday’s announcement, ETHZilla will pay $5 million in cash and $16.1 million in stock for a 15% stake in Zippy, a US-based lender founded in 2021 that originates manufactured-home loans through a digital platform.

The companies plan to link Zippy’s loan-origination and AI-powered systems with ETHZilla’s tokenization stack for onchain distribution of manufactured-home chattel loans, including potential forward-flow sales to institutional investors.

As part of the transaction, ETHZilla will gain a board seat at Zippy and secure a 36-month exclusivity period requiring Zippy to conduct all blockchain infrastructure, digital asset issuance and tokenization through ETHZilla’s platforms.

ETHZilla, the sixth-largest Ether (ETH) treasury company according to CoinGecko data, said the investment builds on its broader push into real-world asset (RWA) markets.

The announcement comes one week after ETHZilla acquired a 20% fully diluted stake in auto-finance startup Karus for $10 million in cash and stock.

ETHZilla’s stock price was down around 10% at the time of writing, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Related: Ethereum rising to $3.3K proves bottom is in: Is 100% ETH rally next?

Several public companies that adopted Ether as a balance-sheet asset this year have seen sharp share-price reversals as the token price has fallen from its peak, ETHZilla among them.

Source: CoinTelegraph