Bitmain — the largest and most established manufacturer of cryptocurrency mining chips — is considering an IPO, or initial public offering. This could potentially open the company’s books to the world and allow the stock market to assign the company real-time value.
Bitmain’s 32-year-old founder Jihan Wu says he’s chiefly examining the possibilities of a listing in Hong Kong or “an overseas market with U.S. dollar-denominated shares.” This, he says, would give early investors the chance to cash out.
“Bitmain is trying very hard to maintain its advantage,” he explained, commenting that the company[1] has dominated the mining scene since it first came to fruition.
Wu says a public share sale would be a “landmark” for both the company and the cryptocurrency space in general. He comments that miners, venture capitalists and developers alike are trying desperately to appease global regulators and are thus opting for less privacy and more transparency to prove digital assets are not fraudulent but rather legitimate forms of currency.
He continued to say that an IPO would also help push Bitmain’s profile, as the company is eagerly looking for ways to branch out into alternate arenas of technology including artificial intelligence which, unlike cryptocurrencies, has garnered solid support from Chinese officials.
One of Bitmain’s primary competitors, Canaan Inc., has already filed for a Hong Kong[2] IPO. The offering is slated to raise approximately $1 billion in initial funding, but this is relatively miniscule compared to what Bitmain has managed to accomplish.
Wu explains that Bitmain’s revenue for 2017 alone was roughly $3 billion[3], and that he and co-founder Micree Zhan own more than 60 percent of the business, making them the primary shareholders. He values Bitmain at just under $12 billion, while he, himself, has a
