TL;DR: The first-ever US Bitcoin mining initial public offering (IPO) is officially in the books. China-based mining rig manufacturer Canaan raised $90 million dollars, according to its press release. That’s a lot less than initially expected, and it has not been an easy road for the historic crypto-related IPO as speculative markets tumbled, spooking major banking underwriters.



Bitcoin Mining Giant Canaan’s US IPO Makes Uneasy Debut

Canaan (Nasdaq: CAN) boasted of how “the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 10,000,000 American Depositary Shares (‘ADSs’), each representing 15 Class A ordinary shares, at US$9.0 per share for a total offering size of US$90,000,000,” a historic first for the relatively nascent Bitcoin mining industry in the United States.

Undercutting the news is a sizeable downturn in cryptocurrency speculative markets. All of the top ten coins by capitalization showed red in 24-hour trading. The marquee digital asset touted in most of the mining company’s marketing and press materials, BTC, fell below the psychologically significant $8,000 mark with no signs of slowing its slide at publication time.

This was after Canaan was forced to rejigger its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) application from what turned out to be an overly-optimistic $400 million IPO expectation down to $100 million, … only today to come up short of even that marker. It’s hard to know exactly which came first, or whether either had influence over the final adjustment and relative lack of investor influence, but crypto prices had been falling between their announcement last month and formal offering today. Last week, the IPO’s largest underwriter, Credit Suisse, pulled out altogether.

Today’s Canaan presser made no mention of Credit Suisse’s departure nor the 75% lowering of expectations with the SEC. Lone underwriting credit was noted as, “Citigroup Global Markets Inc., China Renaissance Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd., CMB International Capital Ltd. are acting as active joint bookrunners of this offering.” Rival Bitmain, also based in China, is said to be looking for a US IPO as well, but so far no formal documentation has been released.

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