Chinese cryptocurrency mining giant Canaan Creative plans to list its IPO in the US. It will offer 1.26 billion shares and is hoping to raise $200 million through the IPO. It will make Canaan the first Chinese miner to have an IPO in the US.
Canaan makes the popular Avalon brand miner range.
Canaan had confidentially filed for IPO listing with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in July of this year. Cannan had initially filed an application in March 2018 with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. That lapsed in November, after which it approached the US SEC.
Canaan is one of China’s three major cryptocurrency mining companies, along with Bitmain and Yibang International.
Canaan had earlier considered launching an IPO on the Science and Technology (Sci-Tech) Innovation Board on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Canaan’s rival Bitmain also filed for IPO listing with US SEC in July of this year after its application to Hong Kong Stock Exchange in March.
US SEC allows all companies to have confidential filings. SEC believes this encourages more firms to go for IPOs.
All firms need to submit their IPO registration statements in form S-1 to the SEC at least 3 to 4 months before their planned IPO. The SEC scrutinizes the documents before giving its approval to the IPO.
Cryptocurrency mining has surely come a long way from the days of standard computers with multiple CPUs to GPUs to FPGAs to ASICs. This journey has made the computational power required to mine cryptocurrencies so large that mining has become prohibitive for the common man and has become an industry by itself. Nowadays, there are complexes where numerous miners work together in tandem. To make the jump to the mainstream, further investments and innovations will be needed in the mining process. It can be facilitated by a public listing of cryptocurrency mining companies.