Eightco announced on Monday that it plans to buy digital tokens that are backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman. In addition to that, it also named Wall Street analyst Dan Ives as its Chairman.
Before market open, Eightco said in a filing that it will be selling 171.2 million shares in a private placement at $1.46 apiece, to buy Worldcoin. The private placement was led by Mozayyx with participation from World Foundation, which was co-founded by Altman and Alex Blania.Worldcoin, which has a market capitalization of $3 billion, is up over 40% on Monday, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Eightco also said that Ether could be included as a second reserve currency, joining the ranks of other companies that have recently announced such moves.At the highest point of the day, shares of Eightco were up 5,632% before some of the gains were trimmed.
Such moves mimic those pioneered by Strategy Inc.’s Michael Saylor, who has sold shares of his own company multiple times to fund the purchase of more Bitcoins on its balance sheet. “This is just the latest sign of excess risk taking in the market,” said Greg Taylor, chief investment officer at PenderFund Capital Management.
Eightco, which had a market capitalisation of $4.4 million before Monday’s trading began, is now valued at $190 million.
This is not the only stray instance of a company’s stock surging through the roof on such announcements. With the crypto markets at record high levels, shares of Forward Industries rose 95% recently on plans of having a Solana treasury, while those of ETHZilla Corp. and Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings rose over 200% when they announced digital-asset treasury strategies.
While Eightco’s move didn’t make much sense to Middlefield Ltd.’s Shane Obata, he said crypto has been validated as an asset class. He added that market watchers can always find “pockets of excess.”
(With Inputs From Agencies.)
