NovaBay Pharmaceutical (NBY) pivoting to crypto

NovaBay Pharmaceuticals (NBY) — a nanocap with a market capitalization of about $30 million — has renamed itself Stablecoin Development Corporation and changed its ticker to SDEV, marking a full shift from healthcare to crypto.

This follows a $134 million private placement backed by firms including Framework Ventures and Tether Investments, the company said.

The firm is using those funds to build a large position in SKY, the governance token tied to the Sky protocol, a decentralized finance protocol that issues the cryptocurrency-backed dollar-pegged stablecoin USDS..

The company currently holds about 2.06 billion SKY tokens, roughly 8.78% of the total supply, worth around $147 million. It acquired over half of that on the open market at an average price near $0.065. The rest came as part of the financing deal, which included cash and stablecoins.

The firm has also begun staking its holdings to earn rewards. It reports earning about 26.6 million SKY tokens so far, with these rewards varying based on network rules and participation.

CoinDesk has reached out to Stablecoin Development Corp for comments, but hasn’t heard back at the time of writing.

Sky, which evolved from MakerDAO, currently has a SKY staking rate of over 10%, according to the protocol’s website. The token’s value is down around 1.45% over the last 24 hours, while the broader crypto market rose 4% over the same period, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index.

NBY is higher by 5% on Monday.