China’s Second Largest Bitcoin Miner Selects Hong Kong For IPO

Canaan Creative, the second largest Bitcoin miner in China has decided to launch a billion dollar IPO in Hong Kong. If the IPO turns out to be a success, it would make Canaan the first blockchain company to be officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The first rumours that Canaan was thinking of launching an IPO outside of China surfaced in the month of April. Back then, the decision was still about where the company planned to launch its IPO.

The two markets that were in play were the US and Hong Kong. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Canaan Creative has decided to go with Hong Kong and is hoping to raise a billion dollars in its first round of offerings.

Canaan Creative has been in the bitcoin industry since 2013 and is the second largest bitcoin miner in China. The company launched operations with the focus of being able to design and sell high-performance circuits that are specifically designed for mining Bitcoin. Last year, the company released some of its unaudited figures which showed that Canaan Creative had a 2017 net income of 410 million yuan, the equivalent of $64 million. This was a 600% increase from its 2016 numbers.

Canaan Hoping For Successful IPO Launch

As for its IPO launch, this is not the first time that Canaan has attempted to go public. The company has so far made two attempts to launch an IPO in China. The first attempt was back in 2016 when it tried to get itself listed as part of China’s A-share market through a partnership with Luyitong, an electric equipment maker based in Shandong. However, regulators scrapped that deal because they felt the IPO was overvalued.

The second IPO attempt took place in 2017. Canaan applied for a listing on the New Third Board market. It has less stringent requirements and aimed at start-ups, but the company still failed to get an IPO for undisclosed reasons.

Despite China cracking down on crypto trading and ICOs, many of Canaan’s clients are still in China. China continues to remain as one of the top three Bitcoin mining nations. Canaan’s plans may be linked to its innovative plan to develop home appliances that will also mine cryptocurrencies. It also has plans to expand its chip-making into mining different alt currencies.

This expansion has led to some concerns over the decentralization of cryptocurrency mining. Bitmain, another Bitcoin mining giant, is making a different expansion as it attempts to shift towards mining Ether for further profits.