Bitmain, the world's largest manufacturer of hardware for cryptocurrency mining, successfully completed a pre-Initial Public Offering (IPO) funding round. This resulted in total capitalization of Bitmain of $15 billion. The main shareholders were Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent, Japanese Softbank and technology giant Uber.
According to QQ News:
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) August 5, 2018
* @BITMAINtech has raised money from Tencent & Softbank at a US$15 billion valuation
* Bitmain will shortly conduct an IPO and be listed on the Hong Kong Stock exchange this year
* CICC is the lead underwriterhttps://t.co/pIN6nAl4PZ pic.twitter.com/IFKrsE3Kdt
Opinions in the crypto community regarding the pre-IPO Bitmain are ambiguous. Some experts believe that the company received an extremely low estimate, fixing one billion dollars of profit in the first quarter.
Bitmain intends to apply to Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Company management wants Bitmain shares to be included in the listing of securities in September. For this purpose, head of the company, Jihan Wu has signed a contract with China International Capital Corporation (CICC), which is one of the most well-known banking groups in China engaged in bringing securities of companies to stock exchanges.
Recently, Bitmain also confirmed rumors that it is going to build a data center in the US state of Texas before going on an IPO. The project will receive $500 million investment within seven years.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
1. Bitmain is the world’s largest manufacturer of bitcoin mining hardware or ASICs units. Mining pools of Bitmain account for almost 50% of all computing resources of bitcoin network.
2. The previous round of financing was led by Sequoia Capital, American hedge fund Coatue and Singapore state investment fund EDBI. The firm also raised $50 million in a series A funding round.