ETHZilla purchased 2 aircraft engines after selling off over $1 billion worth of ETH holdings to start a leasing business

BlockBeats News, January 25th, according to Ethereum treasury company ETHZilla's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) submitted this Friday, the company purchased two CFM56-7B24 aircraft engines for $12.2 million through its newly established subsidiary, ETHZilla Aerospace LLC.

The filing indicates that these two engines are currently leased to a large airline, and ETHZilla has hired Aero Engine Solutions to perform day-to-day management and pay a monthly fee. The transaction includes a buy-sell option agreement: at the end of the lease term, if the engines are in good condition, either party can request a buyout at a price of $3 million per engine.

Behind this unconventional move is the continued pressure on digital asset management companies due to the recent months of volatility and downturn in the cryptocurrency market. Many publicly traded companies that actively raised funds to accumulate tokens last year now see their stock prices significantly below the net value of their on-chain crypto assets, making it difficult for them to raise new funds. ETHZilla itself sold off $40 million worth of ETH in October last year to implement a stock buyback plan, and then sold $74.5 million worth of ETH in December to repay outstanding debts. Its stock price has plummeted by about 97% from its peak in August.

However, the purchase of aircraft engines may also be related to ETHZilla's plans to tokenize real-world assets (RWA) on the blockchain. The company stated on Wednesday that it is building a scalable tokenization pipeline across asset classes with predictable cash flow and global investor demand, with the first batch of tokenized asset products expected to launch in the first quarter of this year.