Bitmain, the leading manufacturer of specialized equipment for mining, disclosed information about its own cryptocurrency savings as part of the presentation for pre-IPO investors. As it turns out, the company traded most of its bitcoin (Bitcoin) in late 2017 - early 2018 for Bitcoin Cash. At the moment, the company's savings are more than 1 million BCH coins.
According to the Bitmain pre-IPO investor deck, they sold most of their #Bitcoin for #Bcash. At $900/BCH, they've bled half a billion in the last 3 months. If Bitcoin Core devs didn't disclose the Bcash vulnerability, it could've wiped a billion dollars off their balance sheets. pic.twitter.com/9BMywdvvby
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) August 11, 2018
According to the information available, Bitmain suffered significant losses by placing a stake on Bitcoin Cash (Bitcoin.Cash), which they purchased when the coin rate was around $900. Over the past six months, savings the mining monopoly has in BCH sank, on average, by $500 million. If it wasn’t for the help of Bitcoin Core developers, who closed critical vulnerabilities of Bitcoin Cash fork, Bitmain could lose all of its savings in this cryptocurrency.
It also turns out that Bitmain does not disclose reports for the second quarter of 2018 for investors yet, most likely, because of the lack of profitability. For the given period of time, cost of popular ASIC-miners under the Bitmain brand decreased by 85%. Sales noticeably fell amid a significant decrease in the bitcoin rate and, consequently, a huge decline in the payback for miners.
In late July, Bitmain reported receiving $1 billion of net profit for the first quarter of 2018. According to preliminary expert estimates, the company's revenue in Q2 fell 2 times compared to Q1.
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 the bitcoin network.
2. Attracting funds through an IPO should help the mining business to develop new directions. In addition, shares of companies related to the cryptosphere may be attractive to investors who are afraid of the high volatility of digital assets.
3. Bitmain plans to raise $18 million via an IPO that is expected to take place on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. However, the losses the company has suffered after staking on BCH may be enough to dissuade investment banks that want to participate in the public offering of the company.