Peter Thiel and entities linked to the Founders Fund have completely exited ETHZilla, the publicly traded Ethereum cash game that once presented itself as a proxy bet on companies’ accumulation of ETH. A Schedule 13G/A filed Tuesday shows the reporting group ended 2025 with no common shares remaining, erasing a position that had been closely watched in crypto and small-cap stock circles.
Thiel exists Ethereum Treasury Play
The amended filing, dated February 17, 2026, is unusually blunt about the current footprint: “Aggregate amount…0.00. Class percentage…0.0%. Ownership of 5% or less of a class.” Positions are reported as of December 31, 2025, meaning the exit was finalized at the end of the year.
PETER THIEL LEAVES ETHEREUM DAT “ETHZILLA” IN THE MIDDLE $ETHZ FOCUS ON THE TOKENIZED JET ENGINE: DEPOSIT pic.twitter.com/nnMeT32LQ4
– Aggr News (@AggrNews) February 18, 2026
This zeroed line item stands in stark contrast to what Thiel-related vehicles disclosed just a quarter earlier. In a previous Schedule 13G/A reporting holdings as of September 30, 2025, Thiel was listed with 928,389 beneficially owned shares, representing 5.6% of the class at that time, with additional blocks allocated to Founders Fund entities. The same filing reports the company’s 1-for-10 reverse stock split effective October 20, 2025, with the reported number of shares adjusted accordingly.
The ETHZilla story is important because it attempted to translate the Bitcoin cash model into a native ETH wrapper at a time when public market vehicles were being touted as liquid, actionable on-ramps to digital asset exposure. Thiel’s initial involvement, widely reported as a 7.5% stake disclosed in August 2025, helped legitimize this narrative, at least briefly.
Most recently, ETHZilla has signaled a move away from a pure ETH treasury identity and a shift toward real-world tokenized assets, including aviation. In an 8-K linked to a Feb. 12 press release, the company said its subsidiary launched “Eurus Aero Token I,” describing it as “a real-world tokenized asset instrument” that gives exposure to leased aircraft engines “via tradable digital tokens representing contractual revenue rights.”
The sequencing leaves traders with an uncomfortable and unresolved question: Did the Founders Fund exit precede (and implicitly anticipate) the strategy change, or was it simply a portfolio cleanup after the initial “ETH cash” talk had cooled?
On The account @treebook78 called Thiel “a master of crisis detection,” writing that he “also avoided this current decline” and arguing that he is a “master of exit” who exits early when bubbles or stress build up.
“In 2022 he posted diamond hands on SNS telling people to hold Bitcoin forever, but then he quietly sold everything and avoided Luna’s crash and FTX’s collapse (if I remember correctly),” @treebook78 wrote.
At press time, Ethereum was trading at $1,984.
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