The company, which generated less than $10 million in revenue last year selling eyecare products, raised $134 million to bet entirely on the Sky protocol’s governance token.
NovaBay Pharmaceuticals is changing its name to Stablecoin Development Corporation and its NYSE American ticker to SDEV, effective April 3, the company announced Monday. The rebrand completes a pivot from wound care to crypto that began with a $134 million private placement in January.
As of March 16, the company held approximately 2.06 billion SKY tokens — roughly 8.78% of the total supply of the Sky protocol’s governance token. SKY is currently trading at around $0.07, according to Coingecko, implying the position is worth roughly $144 million. The token is up 10% over the past month.
SKY ChartThe Deal
The January private placement drew capital from R01 Fund LP, Framework Ventures, Tether Investments, and Sky Frontier Foundation. As part of the transaction, the company received approximately 943.6 million SKY tokens valued at around $58 million, along with $25 million in cash and $51 million in stablecoins. Since closing, it has spent an additional $70.7 million acquiring roughly 1.09 billion SKY on the open market at an average price of about $0.065.
The company has staked the majority of its holdings and reported cumulative staking rewards of approximately 26.6 million SKY.
The strategy mirrors Michael Saylor’s playbook of using a public equity vehicle to offer leveraged exposure to a single crypto asset. CEO Michael Kazley framed the approach around stablecoins broadly, calling them “the most compelling structural opportunity in digital finance.”
The bet comes at a pivotal moment for the Sky ecosystem.
Sky’s TVL has surged 38% this month to $7.52 billion, making it the fourth-largest DeFi protocol. The growth has been fueled by Sky’s fixed 3.75% savings rate exceeding yields on major lending platforms like Aave and Morpho in a risk-off environment.
“Honestly, it’s the classic story of how Sky, just like Maker used to, always does better in bear markets because it’s just focused on a solid product that can be trusted to be stable and deliver good returns,” Sky founder Rune Christensen told The Defiant.
NovaBay describes itself as an “on-chain holding company” focused on “long-duration participation in protocol-aligned digital asset ecosystems.”
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
Source: https://thedefiant.io/news/tradfi-and-fintech/novabay-rebrands-as-stablecoin-development-corporation-with-nearly-9-of-sky-supply
