Shares in NovaBay Pharmaceuticals jumped nearly 19% after the company said it will change its name to Stablecoin Development Corporation as part of a strategic pivot into crypto.
CEO Michael Kazley said the company’s plan is to access cash flows within the growing stablecoin economy. “The name change to Stablecoin Development Corporation reflects our conviction that stablecoins represent the most compelling structural opportunity in digital finance,” he said.
The move follows a wave of firms that have shifted to crypto strategies over the past year to try to improve fortunes, though industry watchers warn of potential consolidation as markets remain down since October.
The company said its stock ticker will change from NBY to SDEV, effective April 3, and disclosed holdings of two billion Sky (SKY) tokens as of March 16 — more than 8% of the total supply. Shares spiked 19% to trade at $1.38 in the session after the announcement.
NovaBay began in 2000 as a California biopharmaceutical company focused on eye care. In a January SEC filing it said it is shifting to operate under “an on-chain holding company framework focused on long-duration participation in protocol-level digital asset ecosystems.”
As part of the pivot, NovaBay entered a $134 million private placement backed by Tether Investments to buy and hold assets within the SKY protocol ecosystem. The company has acquired over two billion SKY tokens and generated cumulative staking rewards of 26.6 million SKY. SKY was trading at $0.073 as of Tuesday.
The firm said it can hold protocol-aligned digital assets for extended periods to participate in protocol-level economic activity and that efforts are underway to continue buying SKY tokens on the open market.
At present SKY is the only digital asset approved under NovaBay’s operating and risk management framework. The company also flagged stablecoins as an increasingly important component of global digital financial infrastructure and expressed particular interest in yield-bearing stablecoins, calling them “productive financial assets that unlock new primitives for savings, treasury management, and capital formation.”
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