China’s second-largest Bitcoin miner is looking to raise $1 billion from their IPO launch in Hong Kong instead of the US.
Canaan Seeks a Billion Through IPO in Hong Kong
The South China Morning Post has reported that Canaan, a giant in the Bitcoin mining industry, has made plans to launch a 1 billion dollar IPO in Hong Kong according to unnamed sources close to the deal. If the IPO is successful it would make Canaan the first company from the blockchain industry to be listed on the Hong Kong bourse.
The rumors that Canaan Creative have been considering launching an IPO outside of China started in April, with most considering the US and Hong Kong as top candidates. Now the unnamed sources say the company has settled on Hong Kong and will be looking to reach the billion-dollar mark.
The Hanzou based company was founded in 2013 to design and sell the high-performance circuits specific to mining Bitcoin. In 2017 Canaan released unaudited figures that showed a net income of 410 Million Yuan ($64 million) which was a 600 percent increase over 2016 profits.
Canaan has previously made two attempts at raising funds through IPO’s in China. First in 2016 when the company tried to gain a listing in China’s A-share market by partnering with electric equipment maker Luyitong but the plan ended when regulators judged the deal to be overvalued. They failed again in 2017 when they applied for a listing in China’s “New Third Board” market which requires less stringent requirements for undisclosed reasons.
Amid China’s crackdown on crypto trading and ICOs the majority of Canaan’s clients are still in the country which remains one of the top three Bitcoin mining nations. The company’s decision to launch an IPO out of the country may be linked to its future plans of creating home appliances that also passively mine cryptocurrency and its desired expansion to create chips for mining alt currencies.
Mining Conglomerates Could Choke Ethereum
Canaan seeking to raise a billion dollars in order to expand its already massive mining interest leads to concerns over the decentralization of cryptocurrency mining as Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain begins a shift towards mining Ether to increase profits.
Ethereum’s increase in popularity and price has attracted mining conglomerates to either change over from mining Bitcoin or add new hardware in order to mine its native token the Ether. Bitmain which builds and operates mining rigs that are much more powerful than the average GPU miner may endanger the decentralized nature of the network.
The dominance of mining conglomerates can push GPU miners out of the space leaving the network to be reliant on a few giant companies. Lucas Nuzzi an analyst at Digital Asset Research called this scenario a “nightmare for decentralization,”.
Image from Shutterstock