Fortitude Mining, a Zcash-focused mining company wholly owned by Digital Currency Group, has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as its new chief executive. Leverton will succeed Andrea Childs on Sept. 21, with Childs transitioning to the role of chief operating officer.
The leadership change comes as Fortitude positions itself for a public listing through a proposed merger with HeartSciences, a transaction the company announced in June and expects to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. If completed, the combined entity would trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to regulatory approval.
Leverton previously served as CEO of Bitcoin miner Hut 8, where she oversaw its merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its subsequent transition to a U.S.-domiciled, Nasdaq-listed company.
Fortitude has mined ZEC since 2019 and launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025. In the first half of 2026, the company produced 72,696 ZEC, representing roughly 28% of the network’s total output during that period. It reported second-quarter revenue of $20.9 million.
The company operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York. In July, Fortitude agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of Equihash hashrate, with shipments planned for the fourth quarter.
Zcash’s native token, ZEC, has surged recently following news that Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang disclosed the firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab. Huang described Zcash as a “private complement to Bitcoin” and supported its inflation-funded developer fund, arguing that long-term funding for privacy technology is increasingly important as artificial intelligence and quantum computing advance.
ZEC traded around $1,424 on Thursday, up approximately 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% year-over-year, according to CoinGecko. Over the past year, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the broader market; as of Sept. 6, the sector was up 213% from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, while every other Glassnode-tracked crypto sector remained below its level at that time. ZEC accounts for 62% of the privacy sector’s market capitalization, and excluding ZEC, the cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens rose 85% over the same period, per Glassnode data.
