2018-7-8 19:21 |
Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain has just completed a round of funding which takes its value to a reported $12 billion dollars USD.
The ASIC chip developer and mining pool operator was founded in 2013. A Bernstein Research report released in February 2018, estimated that Bitmain’s profits make up about 70 to 80 per cent of the market for Bitcoin mining hardware.
According to reports by Chinese news outlets Bitmain recently raised between $300 and $400 million dollars USD in funding from Sequoia China, a U.S-based hedge fund Coatue, and Singapore-based investment fund EDBI.
Sequoia Capital, the parent of Sequoia China, has invested in technology companies which now account for approximately $1.4 trillion dollars USD of stock market value. Since 1972 it has invested in more than 250 companies including Apple, Google, PayPal, and Instagram.
Coatue is a technology-focused hedge fund with an estimated $15 billion dollars’ USD worth of managed assets. It has a specific hybrid fund that focuses on high-growth pre-IPO startups.
Bitmain also raised $50 million dollars in a previous funding round in September 2017, this time from Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital.
Earlier this June, Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu indicated some openness to conducting an initial public offering (IPO) for Bitmain in Hong Kong as a means for early investors to cash in their funds.
CoinTelegraph reports in March 2018, also indicate that Wu is the sole “governing person” of Washington, U.S, firm Ant Creek LLC, which is developing a multi-million dollar “blockchain facility” at the Port of Walla Walla, Washington.
Bitmain holds a 42 per cent share of hashpower on the Bitcoin blockchain by managing mining pools Antpool and BTC.com. It also has stakes in yet another pool, ViaBTC. The combined share is an estimated 48 per cent or more of the entire Bitcoin blockchain.
The crypto mining company’s reach doesn’t end there, Bitmain is now one of the 21 block producers on the EOS blockchain, with 51,000 votes. This gives Bitmain significant influence on EOS development and construction.
Bitmain, operating as Tospring Technology Ltd, has also committed to invest $50 million dollars in the web browser Opera. The investment will be used by Opera to increase brand awareness and for research and development into its AI-driven content discovery technology. Opera accounts for around 1.5 per cent of the web browsing market with a claimed user base of 350 million. In January, Opera added in-browser crypto jacking protection for its users.
The post Mining Giant Bitmain Receives Nearly $400 Million Investment, Considers IPO appeared first on UNHASHED.
Similar to Notcoin - Blum - Airdrops In 2024