Equities analyst Dan Ives is joining a company focused on accumulating %Worldcoin (CRYPTO: $WLD), the crypto associated with Sam Altman’s biometric identity start-up company called World.
%Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: $OCTO) has announced that Ives, Wedbush Securities’ global head of technology research, is now chair of its board of directors.
Eightco also announced a $250 million U.S. private placement to implement a buying strategy around Worldcoin as its main treasury asset.
The offering is expected to close on Sept. 11 of this year, at which point it plans to change its ticker symbol on the %Nasdaq (NASDAQ: $NDAQ) exchange to “ORBS.”
Ives is the latest Wall Street analyst to shift into the crypto space. Tom Lee of Fundstrat recently joined the %Ethereum (CRYPTO: $ETH) accumulator %BitMine (NYSE: $BMNR) as its board chair.
With a crypto-friendly regulatory environment under U.S. President Donald Trump, more companies are following the playbook of %Strategy (NASDAQ: $MSTR) and using debt financing and equity sales to buy cryptocurrencies and hold them on their balance sheet.
Ives is known for his bullish calls on technology companies and also runs the Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF (IVES), which launched earlier this summer with a focus on software and microchips.
World is a venture run by Sam Altman, who also runs private artificial intelligence (A.I.) start-up OpenAI.
World aims to authenticate people on its network given the acceleration of the number of threats from A.I. such as deepfakes.
The project rewards participants who turn over their biometrics with its Worldcoin cryptocurrency.
Worldcoin launched in 2023 and has a market capitalization of about $1 billion U.S., compared to Bitcoin’s $2 trillion U.S. market cap and Ethereum’s $518 billion U.S.
