Winklevoss’ Zcash company pivots to cancer drug after $37.8M loss

Winklevoss-backed Zcash (ZEC) treasury company Cypherpunk Technologies has announced plans to pivot focus to its cancer drug candidate after it reported a $37.8 million net loss for the first six months of 2026.

Unless the price of ZEC rallies soon, the company has admitted that it will need to raise a lot of money to pay for its upcoming FDA trials.

“We expect to continue to generate operating losses for the foreseeable future,” the company forecasted today.

Cypherpunk’s ZEC holdings are worth roughly $157 million, yet Nasdaq traders value the entire company at just $74 million.

That is a basic multiple-to-Net Asset Value (mNAV) of just 0.47x and sadly unremarkable as crypto treasury stocks continue to trade for less than their holdings.

Counting pre-funded warrants and other sweeteners for its self-described Enterprise Value mNAV brings that multiple up to 0.96x on the company’s homepage — still less than the value of its ZEC.

Backed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are the billionaires who helped create the company’s ZEC brand. 

Initially successful, the company was able to acquire its ZEC for a $341.84 average purchase price — well below the current market for ZEC at $486.

The stock also hit $3.70 last November before falling back below $0.69 per share today.

Cypherpunk has lost tens of millions of dollars this year and continues to plan an expensive FDA trial path for its cancer drug. The stock has lost 40% of its value this year and 96% of its value over the past five years.

Gemini, the exchange the Winklevoss twins control, is the custodian for the company’s ZEC.

Read more: Zcash vs Bitcoin debate exposes Naval Ravikant’s conflicts of interest

More expensive cancer trials, and ZEC isn’t helping

Cypherpunk’s cancer drug candidate, an anti-DKK1 antibody Sirexatamab, failed to beat the control arm on progression-free survival across all patients in the randomized Phase 2 study.

The company attributes that miss to an underpowered final analysis.

On the DAT side of the business, the price of ZEC is flat year-to-date, so that didn’t help.

The FDA granted its drug candidate fast track designation in May anyway, a status that speeds up regulatory review. Regulators also agreed on the shape of a roughly 270-patient Phase 3 trial for colorectal cancer. 

Onsi said the company is “conducting a strategic process to determine the best path to advance sirexatamab, whether as an independently financed spin-out company or with a partner who shares our commitment to cancer patients.”

In plainer terms, its drug candidate needs more money.

Tyler Winklevoss wrote at launch that “We plan to continue accumulating ZEC rapidly so that Cypherpunk owns at least 5% of the total ZEC supply.”

Nine months later, the company holds 323,394 ZEC today, or 1.92% of the circulating supply.

The company had just $7.6 million in cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, half a billion dollars of accumulated deficits, loss-generating operations, and an expensive path toward FDA approval for an aspirational drug.

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