Cryptocurrency Mining Giant Bitmain Filed for IPO at HKEX

On the evening of Sept. 26, Bitmain has officially submitted its listing documents to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with China International Capital Corporation as the exclusive underwriter.

Bitmain was jointly founded by Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan in October 2013. It is now the world’s largest producer of cyptocurrency mining chips, with a net profit of $742.7 million (approximately 5.1 billion yuan) in the first half of 2018. In 2017, Bitmain announced that it has ventured into the field of artificial intelligence chips and launched the “SOPHON” series cloud AI chips.

According to the prospectus, Bitmain’s net profit from 2015 to 2017 was $408.6 million, $113.6 million, and $701.4 million respectively. The adjusted net profit of Bitmain in 2017 has reached $953 million. In the first half of this year, Bitcoin’s net profit was $743 million, soaring nearly eight times on a year-on-year basis.

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For Bitmain, node sales account for the vast majority of its revenue. In 2017, the proportion of node sales to total revenue is close to 90 percent. For the first half of this year, this ratio is nearly 95 percent. In addition to node sales, other areas such as mining pool operations, mine services, and self-operated mining are also major business areas for Bitmain.

As of June 30, 2018, Bitmain has opened eleven mines around China, such as in Sichuan, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. These mines can accommodate around 200,000 miners via two mining pools, BTC.com and Antpool.

Bitmain has also been proactively expanding its blockchain ecosystem. According to its prospectus, ever since its founding, the company has been focusing on developing ASIC chips and ASIC-based miners for cryptocurrency mining. As of now, the nodes cover a variety of major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin.