Ethereum treasury firm buys jet engines amid tokenization push after selling ETH

After selling a significant portion of its crypto stash over the past months, Ethereum-focused treasury firm ETHZilla has now added jet engines to its balance sheet.

A Friday filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that the company bought 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 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 where either party can require the other to buy or sell the engines for $3 million each upon lease expiration, provided the engines remain in proper condition.

While the move may sound odd, for an ETH treasury company, buying jet engines and leasing them to aircraft operators is part of the normal aerospace business outside the crypto world.

Airline operators lease jet engines as spares to ensure the planes can continue to operate without disruption if their primary engine fails. Companies such as AerCap, Willis Lease Finance Corporation, and SMBC Aero Engine Lease operate in this space.

The aerospace business is also currently facing a big-engine supply squeeze, with IATA saying its airline members would be forced to pay about $2.6 billion to lease additional spare engines in 2025. In fact, the global aircraft engine leasing market is expected to grow from $11.17 billion in 2025 to $15.56 billion by 2031 at a 5.68% CAGR, according to TechSci Research.

Tokenization pivot

The strange maneuver comes as digital asset treasuries face growing pressure amid crypto markets' tumble over the past months.

Many public firms that aggressively raised funds to accumulate tokens last year now trade well below the net asset value (NAV) of the crypto on their books, leaving little room to raise fresh capital.

ETHZilla itself previously sold $40 million in ETH in October to fund a stock buyback program, then offloaded another $74.5 million in December to redeem outstanding debt. Meanwhile, its stock has tumbled roughly 97% since its August peak.

Still, buying aircraft engines might be part of ETHZilla’s broader ambition to bring tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) onchain.

In a December shareholder letter, the company outlined plans to tokenize assets in partnership with Liquidity.io, a regulated broker-dealer and SEC-registered alternative trading system (ATS). Before that, ETHZilla took a 15% stake in Zippy, a lender focused on manufactured home loans, with plans to tokenize those loans as compliant, tradable instruments. It also acquired a stake in auto finance platform Karus with plans to bring loans onchain.

"We're building a scalable tokenization pipeline across asset classes with predictable cash flows and global investor demand," the firm said in a Wednesday X post. The company expects to list the first tokenized asset offerings in the first quarter of the year.