Fortitude Mining names Jaime Leverton CEO ahead of planned Nasdaq listing

Fortitude Mining picks a former Hut 8 chief to lead it

Fortitude Mining, a company that mines the cryptocurrency Zcash, has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as its chief executive. The company is preparing to enter public markets through a proposed merger with HeartSciences.

Leverton will succeed Andrea Childs as CEO on Sept. 21. Childs will move into the chief operating officer role.

Key facts about Fortitude's mining business

• Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, about 28% of the network's total production in that period.
• The company reported $20.9 million in revenue for the second quarter.
• It operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York.
• In July it agreed to buy 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which are expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate, with shipments expected in the fourth quarter.
• Fortitude is wholly owned by Digital Currency Group. It has mined ZEC since 2019 and launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025.

The HeartSciences merger and the planned TUDE ticker

Fortitude announced its proposed combination with HeartSciences in June. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and would bring Fortitude to public markets.

The combined company is expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval.

ZEC gains follow Paradigm's disclosure

ZEC, the token of the Zcash blockchain — a network designed to allow private transactions using zero-knowledge proofs — traded around $1,424 on Thursday. It has risen about 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year, according to CoinGecko.

The latest gains followed a Wednesday disclosure by Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang 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 developer fund, which is funded through inflation. In his view, long-term funding for privacy technology is becoming more important as artificial intelligence and quantum computing advance.

Privacy coins have outpaced the wider crypto market

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 that time, according to Glassnode data cited in the report.

ZEC accounted for 62% of the privacy sector's market capitalization, according to Glassnode. Excluding ZEC, the firm's cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens was still up 85% over the past year.

What is not yet final

The Nasdaq listing and the TUDE ticker are subject to approval, and the merger is expected — but not confirmed — to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. The available material does not give a specific listing date or say whether approval has been granted.

Why the CEO change is tied to the listing plan

Fortitude is working toward becoming a public company, and its incoming CEO has handled that process before. Leverton led Hut 8 as it merged with US Bitcoin Corp and moved to become a US-domiciled company listed on Nasdaq.

What happens after Sept. 21

Leverton takes over as CEO on Sept. 21, with Childs becoming chief operating officer. The mining machines Fortitude agreed to buy in July are expected to ship in the fourth quarter, the same period in which the HeartSciences deal is expected to close.

Sources

• Cointelegraph