Privacy pays: Hut 8's Leverton steps in to lead Zcash miner Fortitude 💰

Fortitude Mining has named former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as its new chief executive, effective Sept. 21, as the Zcash-focused miner moves toward going public through its proposed merger with HeartSciences. Leverton will succeed current CEO Andrea Childs, who will transition to the chief operating officer role. The company said Leverton previously oversaw Hut 8's merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its transition into a US-domiciled, Nasdaq-listed company.

Fortitude reported second-quarter revenue of $20.9 million and mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, representing roughly 28% of the Zcash network's total production during the period. The company 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 machines, expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate upon delivery in the fourth quarter.

Fortitude, wholly owned by Digital Currency Group, has mined ZEC since 2019 and launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025. It announced the proposed combination with HeartSciences in June; the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the combined company planning to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval.

ZEC continued its rally Thursday, trading around $1,424 and gaining about 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year, according to CoinGecko. The token's latest gains followed a Wednesday disclosure by Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang that his crypto investment firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab. Huang called Zcash "a private complement to Bitcoin" and backed its inflation-funded developer fund, arguing that long-term funding for privacy technology is increasingly important as artificial intelligence and quantum computing advance.

Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the broader crypto market over the past year. As of Sept. 6, the sector was up 213% from Bitcoin's October 2025 peak, while every other crypto sector tracked by Glassnode remained below its level at the time. ZEC accounted for 62% of the privacy sector's market capitalization, according to Glassnode data, and the firm's cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens, excluding ZEC, was still up 85% over the past year.