Former Ethereum treasury company EthZilla has officially rebranded as Forum Markets as it advances its transition to a full-fledged, tokenized company focused on real-world assets.
According to the official announcement, the company has updated its corporate name and branding to Forum Markets, as it moves away from its previous positioning as an Ethereum treasury company. As part of the rebranding, it also changed its Nasdaq ticker symbol to FRMM and is expected to begin trading under the new symbol on March 2, subject to Nasdaq approval.
Forum billed the move as the “next development in the company’s planned strategic evolution” and said it plans to “connect traditional capital markets with blockchain-based financial infrastructure.”
“Forum embodies our belief that the next generation of financial markets will be built around institutional-grade on-chain products backed by real assets, governed by transparency and delivered through regulated infrastructure,” the company’s chairman and CEO, McAndrew Rudisill, said in an accompanying statement.
The company said its platform is designed to aggregate, structure and tokenize real-world, liquidity-generating assets that were previously inaccessible to a broader base of investors. Forum will leverage its subsidiaries and strategic partners to create a repeatable pipeline to create and distribute tokenized investment products across multiple asset classes.
Forum has already begun phasing out its balance sheet crypto strategy and announced earlier this month that it had acquired two commercial jet engines leased from a “major US airline”, which will underpin its first aviation-backed offering, the Eurus Aero Token I.
ETH Cash Flow Plans Fail to Hold Investors’ Attention
Shares of ETHZilla soared more than 13% after the company announced the rebranding and ticker change. However, since the start of the year, the company’s shares have fallen more than 20%, as crypto Treasury shares have struggled to gain traction in recent months.
ETHZilla, formerly a biotech company known as 180 Life Sciences, became an Ethereum treasury company last year when crypto treasury stocks were trending. Subsequently, it acquired as much as 102,246 ETH at the height of the strategy, but as the initial enthusiasm faded and stock prices retreated, the company later announced plans to move into the real-world token asset market.
Earlier this month, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, one of the company’s early backers, liquidated its position. ETHZilla also decided to sell part of its assets to reduce its crypto exposure and initiate share buybacks in an attempt to stabilize its stock performance.