Mining company linked to Barry Silbert seeks merger and reinforces its bet on Zcash.

• Fortitude Mining merger expands focus on Zcash;
• Barry Silbert remains confident in ZEC's potential;
• Nasdaq shares surge after announcement of the deal;

Fortitude Mining, a Zcash mining company controlled by Digital Currency Group (DCG), announced a merger agreement with HeartSciences, a Nasdaq-listed medical technology company. The transaction caught the market's attention and led to a strong increase in HeartSciences' shares during trading, even during a challenging period for the performance of the ZEC token.

The announcement reinforced the confidence of Barry Silbert, founder and CEO of DCG, in the privacy-focused network. According to him, "We believe that Zcash represents one of the most attractive opportunities in digital assets."

Following the announcement of the merger, HeartSciences shares surged by approximately 60% in the first hours of trading, closing the day at US$2,70, accumulating a gain of approximately 55%.

According to Fortitude Mining CEO Andrea Childs, the merger was not structured to generate operational synergies between the businesses. The main objective is to expand fundraising capacity and create conditions to accelerate the mining company's strategic projects.

“By going public, GA expects to gain the flexibility and access to capital needed to accelerate our core strategies, which are our venture capital mining platform and, most importantly today, Zcash,” said Childs. “And also to continue pursuing high-return opportunities in our energy portfolio.”

The executive also stated that DCG is expected to control approximately 95% of the company resulting from the merger. The transaction is expected to be completed during the second half of 2026.

Childs emphasized that Fortitude does not operate as a cryptocurrency treasury company. According to her, the focus remains on mining activity, which the company has been conducting since 2019.

“We are not a digital asset treasury company for several reasons. First, we are an operating company, so we have been buying machines and mining Zcash specifically since 2019,” he stated.

Despite this, she admitted that the strategy could be adjusted in the future. "We may decide to hold more Zcash on the balance sheet so that we don't have to finance the business by liquidating Zcash."

The announcement comes just weeks after Zcash faced a period of intense volatility. The token lost more than 60% of its value after the disclosure of a vulnerability related to transaction forgery, which triggered a wave of selling in the market.

After implementing an emergency update to fix the problem, the cryptocurrency recovered some of its losses. Even so, the asset remained under pressure, trading near $415 on the day the merger was announced.

Even in the face of recent turbulence, Fortitude maintains ambitious projections for the network. Childs stated that "We believe Zcash has the potential to represent about 10% of Bitcoin's total market capitalization."

Silbert also continues to defend the growth thesis for privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. "Our bet is that 5% to 10% of Bitcoin, in the coming years, will migrate to privacy-focused cryptocurrencies," he previously stated.