Fortitude Names Ex-Hut 8 CEO to Lead Zcash Miner Ahead of IPO

Fortitude Mining, a Zcash-focused miner backed by Digital Currency Group, has named former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as its new chief executive, a leadership change that comes as the company moves toward going public. Leverton will take over from Andrea Childs on Sept. 21, with Childs shifting to the chief operating officer role.

The appointment is tied to Fortitude’s planned merger with HeartSciences, announced in June. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and would bring the combined company to the public markets, with trading expected on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval.

Key takeaways

• Jaime Leverton, previously CEO of Hut 8, is set to become Fortitude Mining’s CEO on Sept. 21 ahead of a proposed public-market merger.
• Fortitude reported mining 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026—about 28% of total Zcash network production for that period.
• In July, Fortitude agreed to buy 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro units, expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate with shipments slated for the fourth quarter.
• Separately, ZEC has surged, supported by disclosures from Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang about holding ZEC and investing in Zcash’s open development efforts.

Fortitude’s leadership shift ahead of a public-market plan

Leverton’s move to Fortitude positions the miner with executive experience specifically in scaling and restructuring crypto mining businesses for public-market access. She previously led Hut 8, overseeing the company’s merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its subsequent transition into a US-domiciled, Nasdaq-listed entity.

At Fortitude, CEO Andrea Childs will step into a chief operating officer role as the company executes its combination with HeartSciences. The merger announcement placed Fortitude on a path to public listing, with the combined company expected to trade on Nasdaq under TUDE, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals.

Fortitude is wholly owned by Digital Currency Group. The company has mined ZEC since 2019 and, as it has grown, launched a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025—an approach designed to streamline operations from infrastructure through production.

Mining output and scale: ZEC production, power footprint, and expansion

Operational results underscore Fortitude’s sizable role in Zcash’s proof-of-work ecosystem. For the first half of 2026, the company mined 72,696 ZEC, representing roughly 28% of the network’s total production during that time window.

Financially, Fortitude reported revenue of $20.9 million for the second quarter. The company also operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas, and New York.

In July, Fortitude agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro mining machines. The expected add-on of 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate—along with shipments anticipated in the fourth quarter—signals an effort to increase capacity heading into and beyond the timeframe in which the merger would close.

For investors and traders, these details matter because they connect management changes and corporate restructuring with tangible network exposure: Fortitude’s mining output is directly tied to hashrate deployment schedules, power availability, and the economics of mining ZEC in current market conditions.

Why ZEC rallied: Paradigm ties and the privacy-coin narrative

While Fortitude advances toward public markets, Zcash itself has been drawing renewed attention from investors. According to CoinGecko, ZEC was trading around $1,424 at the time of reporting, after gaining about 185% over the prior 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year.

The rally has been linked to a disclosure from Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang. In a post published Wednesday, Huang said the investment firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab. The disclosure also characterized Zcash as a “private complement to Bitcoin” and referenced the importance of long-term funding for privacy-related development as technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing evolve.

Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph highlighted how Huang framed privacy technology as a category that requires sustained support rather than short-cycle speculative attention. That emphasis appears to be resonating with a broader market trend: privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the wider crypto market over the last year.

Privacy sector outperformance and Zcash’s weight in the basket

Glassnode data points to just how dominant ZEC has been within the privacy-coin complex. As of Sept. 6, the privacy sector was up 213% from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, according to the firm’s sector comparison referenced in the report. Glassnode also noted that other sectors tracked by the firm remained below the level reached at that time.

More granularly, Glassnode data cited in the report shows ZEC accounted for 62% of the privacy sector’s market capitalization. Even without ZEC, the cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens tracked by Glassnode was still up 85% over the year—suggesting that the move is not exclusively tied to Zcash. Still, ZEC’s share indicates that any momentum in ZEC tends to heavily influence the sector’s headline performance.

Glassnode data (as cited) was shared via a public post: https://x.com/glassnode/status/2096943736584302607.

For readers watching both developments, the next key question is whether Fortitude’s operational expansion and public-market trajectory will amplify institutional interest in Zcash mining, while the market continues to react to signals from major crypto investment firms like Paradigm. The merger timeline remains the near-term catalyst to monitor, but ZEC’s sustained price momentum will likely depend on whether privacy-coin inflows persist beyond the latest disclosures.