Zcash miner Fortitude appoints Jaime Leverton as CEO

Fortitude Mining has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as chief executive as the Zcash-focused miner prepares to go public through a proposed merger with HeartSciences. Leverton will succeed Andrea Childs as CEO on Sept. 21, with Childs moving to chief operating officer.

Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, accounting for about 28% of the network’s total production during the period. The company reported revenue of $20.9 million for the second quarter.

It operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York, and in July agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which are expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate. Shipments are expected 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.

The company announced its proposed combination with HeartSciences in June, with the transaction expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and bring Fortitude to the public markets. The combined company is expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval.

Leverton previously served as CEO of Hut 8, where she oversaw the Bitcoin miner’s merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its transition into a US-domiciled Nasdaq-listed company. Current CEO Andrea Childs will transition to the chief operating officer role.

Related: Cypherpunk launches Zcash mining fleet controlling 18% of network hashrate

Zcash surges amid Paradigm investment

Zcash continued its rally on Thursday, with ZEC, the native token of the blockchain designed to enable private transactions using zero-knowledge proofs, trading around $1,424. The token has gained about 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year, according to CoinGecko.

The latest gains came after Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang disclosed Wednesday that the crypto investment firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab.

Huang described Zcash as 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.

Over the past year, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the broader crypto market. 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. Excluding ZEC, the firm’s cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens was still up 85% over the past year.

Source: Glassnode