Fortitude Mining has named Jaime Leverton, the former chief executive of Bitcoin miner Hut 8, as its new CEO as the Zcash-focused mining company prepares to go public through a proposed merger with HeartSciences.

Leverton will succeed Andrea Childs as chief executive on Sept. 21, with Childs moving into the chief operating officer role.

Fortitude produced 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, representing roughly 28% of the Zcash network's total output during the period, and 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 — a footprint that gives the company an outsized position in Zcash mining.

In July, Fortitude agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which are expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate — the proof-of-work algorithm Zcash uses, distinct from the SHA-256 hashing that secures Bitcoin — with shipments slated for the fourth quarter. The deliveries are set to land in the same quarter in which the HeartSciences transaction is expected to close.

Wholly owned by Digital Group, Fortitude has mined ZEC since 2019 — seven years of operating history with the asset — and launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025.

The company announced its proposed combination with HeartSciences in June. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and take Fortitude to the public markets, with the combined company expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval. The merger route, rather than a traditional initial public offering, has become a familiar path to public markets for crypto companies, and a completed deal would give public investors a listed company built around Zcash mining.

Leverton previously served as CEO of Hut 8, where she oversaw the Bitcoin miner's merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its transition into a US-domiciled, Nasdaq-listed company — a track record in public-market transitions that lines up with the listing now ahead of Fortitude.

ZEC Gains Follow Paradigm Disclosure

Zcash continued its rally on Thursday, with ZEC — the native token of a blockchain designed to enable private transactions through zero-knowledge proofs — trading around $1,424. According to CoinGecko, the token has gained about 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year.

The latest gains followed a Wednesday disclosure by Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang that the crypto investment firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab.

Huang described Zcash as a "private complement to Bitcoin" and voiced support for its inflation-funded developer fund, arguing that long-term funding for privacy technology is becoming increasingly important as artificial intelligence and quantum computing advance.

Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the broader crypto market over the past year. As of Sept. 6, the sector was up 213% from Bitcoin's October 2025 peak, while every other crypto sector tracked by Glassnode remained below its level at that time, according to Glassnode data.

ZEC accounted for 62% of the privacy sector's market capitalization. Excluding ZEC, Glassnode's cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens was still up 85% over the past year. If the HeartSciences deal closes as expected in the fourth quarter, Fortitude would reach the Nasdaq with the privacy sector in the midst of a market-beating year.