Former Hut 8 Chief Jaime Leverton Named CEO of Zcash Miner Fortitude Before Going Public
Jaime Leverton, who previously led Hut 8, has been named to head Fortitude as the company focused on Zcash mining broadens its scope and prepares for its anticipated transition to public markets.
In a leadership transition ahead of its public market debut, Fortitude Mining has brought on board Jaime Leverton, the former chief executive of Hut 8, to serve as its new CEO. The Zcash-focused mining operation is gearing up to enter public markets via a planned combination with HeartSciences. Leverton is set to assume the chief executive position on Sept. 21, replacing Andrea Childs, who will transition into the role of chief operating officer.
During the initial six months of 2026, Fortitude successfully mined 72,696 ZEC, representing approximately 28% of all tokens produced on the network throughout that timeframe. The mining operation disclosed revenues totaling $20.9 million for the second quarter of the year.
The company's mining infrastructure spans over 60 megawatts of electrical power capacity distributed among seven facilities located in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York. In July, Fortitude entered into an agreement to acquire 9,000 units of the Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro mining equipment, which are projected to contribute an additional 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate to its operations. The mining hardware deliveries are anticipated to arrive during the fourth quarter.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, Fortitude has been engaged in ZEC mining activities since 2019 and established itself as a vertically integrated mining operation in 2025.
In June, the company unveiled its planned merger agreement with HeartSciences, with the deal projected to reach completion during the fourth quarter of 2026, facilitating Fortitude's entry into public markets. Following the completion of the transaction, the merged entity is anticipated to commence trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the stock symbol TUDE, pending regulatory approval.
During her tenure at Hut 8, Leverton held the position of chief executive officer and guided the Bitcoin mining company through its combination with US Bitcoin Corp., while also managing its transformation into a US-based company listed on Nasdaq. The outgoing CEO Andrea Childs will assume responsibilities as the chief operating officer in the new organizational structure.
Zcash surges amid Paradigm investment
The rally in Zcash extended into Thursday's trading session, with ZEC, the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain platform engineered to facilitate private transactions through the use of zero-knowledge proofs, changing hands at approximately $1,424. According to data from CoinGecko, the digital asset has appreciated roughly 185% during the preceding 30-day period and has surged more than 2,600% over the course of the past year.
The most recent price appreciation followed Wednesday's revelation by Matt Huang, co-founder of Paradigm, that the cryptocurrency investment firm maintains a position in ZEC and has invested in the Zcash Open Development Lab.
In his statement, Huang characterized Zcash as a "private complement to Bitcoin" and expressed support for its inflation-funded developer fund, contending that sustainable long-term financing for privacy-preserving technology is becoming progressively more critical as developments in artificial intelligence and quantum computing continue to advance.
Throughout the past year, cryptocurrencies centered on privacy features have delivered superior returns compared to the overall cryptocurrency market. Based on data as of Sept. 6, the privacy-focused sector had climbed 213% from the peak Bitcoin reached in October 2025, whereas all other cryptocurrency sectors monitored by Glassnode stayed beneath their levels from that time period.
According to data compiled by Glassnode, ZEC represented 62% of the total market capitalization within the privacy sector. When ZEC is excluded from the calculation, the firm's capitalization-weighted collection of privacy-focused tokens still demonstrated an increase of 85% throughout the past year.
