What’s Happening With Eightco Stock?

Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: ORBS), a little-known e-commerce company, saw its shares skyrocket more than 3,000% in a single session last Monday. The surge followed the company’s announcement that it plans to build a treasury centered on Worldcoin, the digital token backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman. But the frenzy proved short-lived. Since peaking near $45, the stock has given up about two-thirds of its gains and now trades at roughly $12 per share. So what exactly is happening with Eightco stock?

Image by Gabrielli Pereira from Pixabay

The rally last week was triggered after Eightco disclosed it had raised $20 million in funding from crypto miner BitMine, while also announcing a private placement of 171.2 million shares at $1.46 each. At the same time, Worldcoin itself jumped more than 40% to a market capitalization of about $3 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, as traders speculated that Eightco’s buying could meaningfully boost demand. The company also indicated that Ether could be added as a secondary reserve asset, expanding its bet beyond Worldcoin. The offering, led by Mozayyx with participation from the World Foundation, is earmarked for acquiring Worldcoin tokens directly. That announcement unleashed massive speculative interest in OCTO stock, with trading volumes surging to extraordinary levels. But momentum quickly reversed. After spiking to nearly $45, shares plunged as profit-taking set in and total trading volumes collapsed. The rapid reversal underscores how quickly speculative money can vanish in a trade driven more by hype than fundamentals.

Skepticism Is Warranted

The skepticism is warranted. Crypto-treasury strategies are inherently risky. In recent years, some publicly listed firms outside the digital asset sector have increasingly experimented with allocating corporate cash reserves into crypto. The logic is simple. Higher token prices and looser regulatory conditions under the Trump Administration could boost balance sheets. The move also enables these companies to attract more tech-savvy investors.

The blueprint here is MicroStrategy – recently rebranded as Strategy – which began accumulating bitcoin in 2020. That gamble has turned the company into a leveraged bet on digital assets, with holdings now worth tens of billions of dollars. Strategy’s stock has traded at a premium to its underlying bitcoin because markets assume it can use debt markets to buy even more. But while Strategy’s playbook has inspired imitators, the risks remain considerable.

Cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile, with token prices capable of swinging considerably in short periods. If prices collapse, companies with outsized exposure could face liquidity crises. Just as importantly, such bets often do little to strengthen the core business operations of these firms. Even after last week’s big surge and correction, Eightco remains a tiny player with a market cap of under $50 million, keeping it firmly in microcap territory.

While Eightco looks highly speculative, the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio, with a collection of 30 stocks, has a track record of comfortably outperforming its benchmark that includes all 3 – S&P 500, Russell, and S&P midcap. Why is that? As a group, HQ Portfolio stocks provided better returns with less risk versus the benchmark index; less of a roller-coaster ride, as evident in HQ Portfolio performance metrics.