From Diamond-Handing to Jet-Fueling: ETHZilla Sheds Its Skin (and ETH Bag) for 'Forum'

ETHZilla's stock ripped a cool 13% higher Wednesday, a classic "buy the rumor, sell the news" pump in reverse, after the firm announced it's rebranding to "Forum" and abandoning its "crypto treasury" phase faster than a degen abandons a sinking shitcoin.

The company will now operate as Forum Markets, or just Forum for its friends, with a planned Nasdaq ticker change to 'FRMM' starting Monday (pending the usual bureaucratic nod). Chair and CEO McAndrew Rudisill framed the move as building a bridge—or perhaps a high-frequency tunnel—"connecting traditional capital markets with blockchain-based financial infrastructure."

Shares of ETHZilla (ETHZ) closed at $3.91, marking that double-digit gain. Let's not pop the champagne just yet, though; the stock is still down over 20% for the year, having taken a beating alongside the broader crypto winter—proof that corporate bags can get just as heavy as retail ones.

This corporate identity shuffle is becoming a habit. It began life as a biotech play named 180 Life Sciences before doing a full 180 into ETHZilla in July 2025, catching the "corporate ETH treasury" trend at its peak and loading up on Ether.

That genius (or disastrous) pivot rocketed its shares to a multi-year high of $107 by August 2025, riding the wave as ETH itself flirted with the $5k club. Then the tide went out, revealing who was swimming naked, and the share price got absolutely rekt.

With Wall Street's shiny object syndrome now fixated on tokenization instead of treasury bets, Rudisill declared in December that ETHZilla would pivot once more, this time towards bringing "real-world assets (RWA) on-chain." Because when one narrative dies, you simply ape into the next.

True to its word, the company has already scooped up two commercial jet engines leased to a "leading US air carrier" and launched a token tied to them, the Eurus Aero Token I. Because nothing says "Web3" like fractionalized airplane parts.

Despite this bold new "Forum" future, the company—our bad, Forum—still clutches a not-so-small bag of 69,802 ETH, worth roughly $143.7 million today. That lonely stash still makes it the seventh-largest corporate ETH whale, according to CoinGecko, a permanent reminder of its previous life.

This rebrand comes hot on the heels of prominent investor Peter Thiel's Founders Fund dumping its entire position in the company earlier this month, as the stock continued its long, painful descent from its all-time high—a classic case of "smart money" exiting stage left.

Vincent Liu, CIO at Kronos Research, offered a dry take on the perils of the single-asset treasury meta, noting such strategies are "highly dependent on strong market conditions" and that firms ultimately "need revenue-generating businesses." In other words, you can't just HODL your way to profitability forever.

Forum Markets is scheduled to begin trading under its fresh, narrative-friendly ticker 'FRMM' come March 2, officially opening its next chapter. Let's see how long this one lasts.