After selling off a significant portion of its cryptocurrency stash over the past few months, Ethereum-focused treasury firm ETHZilla has now added jet engines to its balance sheet.
A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday shows the company purchased two CFM56-7B24 aircraft engines for $12.2 million through a newly formed subsidiary, ETHZilla Aerospace LLC.
The engines are currently leased to a major airline and ETHZilla has hired Aero Engine Solutions to manage them in exchange for a monthly fee, according to the document. The deal includes a buy-sell option agreement in which either party can require the other to buy or sell the engines for $3 million each when the lease expires, provided the engines remain in good condition.
While this move may seem odd, for an ETH treasury company, buying jet engines and leasing them to aircraft operators is a normal part of aerospace business outside of the crypto world.
Airline operators lease jet engines as spare parts to ensure that planes can continue operating without interruption if their main engine fails. Companies such as AerCap, Willis Lease Finance Corporation, and SMBC Aero Engine Lease operate in this space.
The aerospace sector is also currently facing a shortage of large engines, with IATA saying its member airlines would be forced to pay approximately $2.6 billion to lease additional spare engines in 2025. In fact, the global aircraft engine rental market is expected to grow from $11.17 billion in 2025 to $15.56 billion by 2031, with a CAGR of 5.68%, according to TechSciResearch.
Tokenization Pivot
The strange move comes as digital asset treasuries face increasing pressure amid the collapse of crypto markets in recent months.
Many public companies that aggressively raised funds to accumulate tokens last year are now trading well below the crypto’s net asset value (NAV) on their books, leaving little room to raise new capital.
ETHZilla itself already sold $40 million worth of ETH in October to fund a share buyback program, then offloaded another $74.5 million in December to pay down outstanding debt. Meanwhile, its stock has fallen about 97% since its August peak.
Nonetheless, purchasing aircraft engines could be part of ETHZilla’s broader ambition to bring real-world token assets (RWA) online.
In a December shareholder letter, the company outlined plans to tokenize assets in partnership with Liquidity.io, a regulated broker and alternative trading system (ATS) registered with the SEC. Prior to this, ETHZilla took a 15% stake in Zippy, a lender focused on manufactured home loans, with the intention of transforming these loans into tradable and compliant instruments. It also acquired a stake in auto financing platform Karus and plans to set up on-chain lending.
“We are building a scalable tokenization pipeline across all asset classes with predictable cash flows and global investor demand,” the company said in a post on Wednesday.
