Biotech stock NovaBay jumps 19% amid pivot, rebrand to Stablecoin Development Corporation

Shares of NovaBay Pharmaceuticals jumped Monday after the small-cap biotech said it will rebrand as Stablecoin Development Corporation and shift its strategy toward digital assets tied to the Sky ecosystem.

The company said it will change its name and ticker from NBY to SDEV, with the new symbol expected to begin trading on April 3.

Shares rose 19% to roughly $1.40 following the announcement, but remain down more than 95% year to date.

As part of the shift, NovaBay disclosed holdings of approximately 2.06 billion SKY tokens as of March 16, worth about $150 million and representing roughly 8.8% of supply, alongside an active staking program that has generated about 26.6 million tokens in rewards.

The SKY token is trading at $0.073, up about 15% year to date, even as the broader crypto market has declined.

The position stems from a strategic realignment earlier this year. In January, the company entered into a $134 million private placement backed by investors including Framework Ventures, Tether Investments, and Sky Frontier Foundation, and began deploying capital into SKY.

The company described the strategy as an "on-chain holding company" model focused on long-duration participation in protocol-level activity, with SKY currently the only approved digital asset under its framework.

Stablecoin momentum

SKY is the governance token of the Sky protocol, the rebranded MakerDAO ecosystem, which issues the USDS stablecoin and generates revenue through lending and other on-chain activity.

NovaBay’s announcement comes as stablecoins draw increasing attention from both investors and policymakers. Lawmakers last week reached an "agreement in principle" on how stablecoin yield could be treated in a broader crypto market structure bill, a key step toward advancing legislation in the Senate Banking Committee.

The company said it sees stablecoins as a growing component of digital financial infrastructure, particularly as yield-bearing models expand across on-chain lending and real-world asset strategies.