Today in crypto, Nasdaq-listed Flora Growth will rebrand to ZeroStack after raising $401 million to support 0G, the Changpeng Zhao-backed YZi Labs grows stake in stablecoin issuer Ethena. Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining difficulty hits new all-time high.
Cannabis firm Flora Growth launches $401M treasury backing Zero Gravity
Nasdaq-listed cannabis firm Flora Growth has launched a $401 million treasury initiative to back Zero Gravity (0G), a blockchain project focused on powering decentralized AI infrastructure.
The move comes through a private placement deal combining $35 million in cash with $366 million in in-kind digital assets, primarily denominated in 0G tokens. As part of the transaction, Flora will rebrand as ZeroStack while retaining its Nasdaq ticker, FLGC, according to a Friday announcement.
Solana (SOL) treasury company DeFi Development Corp. (DFDV) led the deal, alongside Hexstone Capital and Carlsberg SE Asia PTE Ltd, with participation from firms including Dao5, Abstract Ventures and Dispersion Capital.
“We’re thrilled to partner with FLGC on this fundraise and look forward to driving a deep collaboration between 0g and Solana,” said DFDV CEO Joseph Onorati. Flora will also hold a portion of its treasury in SOL tokens.
Flora Growth shares surge 5% on Friday. Source: Google Finance
Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs deepens stake in stablecoin issuer Ethena
Tech-focused venture capital firm YZi Labs has increased its stake in Ethena, the stablecoin issuer behind USDe, which will assist the digital dollar’s adoption across decentralized and centralized platforms.
The investment will assist Ethena USDe’s (USDe) expansion on BNB Chain while enabling Ethena to continue building its USDtb stablecoin and an institutional settlement layer, Converge, Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs said in a statement on Friday.
USDtb is backed by short-duration treasury assets, including BlackRock’s BUIDL, while Converge is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chain focused on tokenizing real-world assets.
The move supports YZi’s mission to “support open, scalable digital dollar infrastructures that can serve as a backbone of efficiency and liquidity for the entire financial ecosystem.”
Source: YZi Labs
Ethena Labs CEO Guy Young added: “The holy grail of digital dollar distribution has always been embedding stable, yield-bearing assets directly into the core of the crypto economy. With USDe now scaling across exchanges, DeFi protocols, and global user bases, that vision is becoming a reality.”
Bitcoin mining difficulty hits a new all-time high
The Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty, a measurement of the relative challenge of finding and adding new blocks to the Bitcoin ledger, hit a new all-time high of 142.3 trillion on Friday.
Mining difficulty continues to climb, forming a long-term ‘up-only’ trend due to the growth of the protocol and the need to expend ever-greater computing resources to mine blocks in the face of mounting competition.
Bitcoin mining difficulty hits an all-time high of 142.3 trillion. Source: CryptoQuant
Bitcoin’s hashrate, the total computing power deployed by miners on the network, also hit an all-time high of over 1.1 trillion hashes per second on Friday, according to CryptoQuant.
The rising mining difficulty and the need to expend energy resources in a process that is only becoming harder over time have raised concerns that Bitcoin mining is becoming increasingly centralized and cost-prohibitive, pushing out smaller players.
