Crypto Mining Company Bitmain files for IPO with Deutsche Bank according to a report by Cointelegraph. The move was made without fanfare and with minimal press involvement.
The first mention of the IPO was made in the chinese crypto news outlet Tencent. The company was keeping the whole operation low-key to stave off possible controversies.
Tencent News also reported that the IPO plans have been dominated by Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu and Chief Financial Officer Liu Luyao.
To increase their chance of success of the IPO going smoothly, Bitmain supposedly hired Zheng Hua as a consultant. Hua is a former Nasdaq representative for China and will bring his expertise to bear on the IPO process.
The review process will last three rounds and may possibly last for a minimum of 1-2 months.
A further unnamed industry source, reportedly familiar with the SEC’s listing procedures, told Tencent:
“The SEC has no biased position toward the blockchain business, but is rather concerned about professional and technical issues.”
There is also a possible controversy regarding Bitmain’s connection to BCH or Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash is a fork of the main Bitcoin blockchain and has been known to have problems. Recently, a report suggested that almost 50% of the BCH blockchain hashrate comes from 1 source.
Tangled backstory
Industry onlookers will remember Bitmain’s earlier, ill-fated attempt to file a major $3 billion IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in September 2018, which lapsed after multiple controversies this March.
This week has been another eventful week for Bitmain with Jihan Wu revealing that fellow co-founder Micree Ketuan Zhan had left the company amid signs of internal company drama.
On Oct. 28, rival Chinese mining firm Canaan Creative filed for an IPO with the U.S. SEC to raise $400 million, eyeing a listing on Nasdaq under the ticker CAN.
Earlier this month, Bitmain opened what it claims is the “world’s largest” facility for Bitcoin mining in Rockdale, Texas. Crypto Mining Company Bitmain files for IPO under a significant amount of controversy.
About Bitmain
Bitmain Technology Holding Company (“Bitmain”) is a multinational semiconductor company with state-of-the-art IC design capabilities. Bitmain offers products, including chips, servers, and cloud solutions, for blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing, Bitmain has research and development centers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and United States. According to Frost & Sullivan, Bitmain is among the world’s top 10 and China’s second largest fabless IC designer.
Bitmain is focused on computing chips with a vision of realizing a even more beautiful digital world. It has design capabilities for different chip processes, including the state-of-the-art 5 nanometer process. In the blockchain mining area, Bitmain has shipped billions of ASICs, accounting for 75% of the global market. Being one of the world’s few companies with the capability to develop cloud-based AI chips, Bitmain has successfully released four generations of its AI chip. With advanced tensor acceleration for deep learning, Bitmain’s AI chips can be used for a wide range of applications such as facial recognition, automatic driving, smart cities, smart governance, smarter security, medical services and more.
