Eightco Holdings Inc. saw its shares surge after the company announced a dramatic pivot: building a corporate treasury centered on Worldcoin and raising a private placement to support the purchase.
The firm said it raised $250 million to acquire WLD tokens and secured a $20 million strategic investment from crypto miner BitMine. The stock exploded from a Friday close of $1.43 in pre-market trading to close the session at $45.08, earlier spiking as high as $83.12.
Dan Ives, recently named Eightco chairman, framed the move as more than a token bet. He described Worldcoin as an authentication and trust layer at the intersection of AI and crypto, highlighting the project’s Proof of Personhood tech and the company’s focus on digital identity. Eightco also said it may hold cash and Ethereum as secondary reserve assets.
Worldcoin — co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — launched as a biometric identity network using the iris-scanning Orb. The token has a total supply of 10 billion WLD, and the project says it has registered nearly 16 million accounts across more than 45 countries. The project has faced regulatory and privacy scrutiny despite claims of a zero-knowledge approach to biometric data.
Why it matters: this is an unusual corporate treasury strategy that ties a public company’s balance sheet to a single, identity-focused crypto project. Investors should note the high volatility in both the stock and the token and factor in regulatory and privacy risks tied to biometric data and nascent identity infrastructure.
Source: Decrypt. Read the original coverage for full details.