On January 25, BitFuFu, a Bitmain-backed cloud mining company, announced plans to go public in the US through a merger with special-purpose acquisition vehicle, Arisz Acquisition Corp. The merger deal would involve a transaction of $70 million of fully committed investment financing led by Bitmain, the bitcoin mining-rig maker, and a spinoff company, Antpool Technologies.
The merger is important to BitFuFU. The deal is expected to bring more than $129 million in net cash profits for the cloud mining platform. The merged firm is set to have a pro forma value of $1.5 billion, 4.6 times more than the projected 2020 revenue. The combined company is planned to be named as BitFUFU Inc, which would be listed on the Nasdaq Stock exchange market under the ticker symbol FUFU.
BitFUFU aims to provide a “one-stop hashrate solution provider for miners of all sizes,” and offer cloud-mining, self-mining and miner hosting effectively to allow users to invest in cryptocurrency mining without having to operate the facilities. The company expects to increase from 3 EH/s (exahash/second) at the end of 2021 to 10 EH/s by the end of 2022.
The deal is expected to be completed in Q3, though pending stockholder and regulatory approval. According to the press release, BitFUFU’s management would remain at the company’s helm and existing BitFUFU stockholders will hold onto their equity in full.
Leo Lu, the Founder and CEO of BitFuFu, stated why the merger is important for the firm: “Entering this transaction now is the most optimal and strategic timing for enduring our rapid growth trajectory and increasing our global footprint in the crypto-mining industry. This milestone of becoming a publicly-traded company through our merger with ARIZ will further drive improvements to our corporate governance, increase transparency and attract new talent to help us achieve our vision of becoming the top digital asset mining company.”
BitFuFu was established in 2020 with investment from Bitmain, the world’s largest bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer. The company is Bitmain’s exclusive cloud mining partner.
Bitmain Wants to Make Crypto Mining Easier
The announcement by BitFUFU reinforces Bitmain’s commitment to make Bitcoin mining easier and more accessible to the public. BitFUFU hosts mining machines in data centers operated by third parties and rents out the computing power to customers. Over 50% of its computing power is located in Kazakhstan. Last year, the Kazakh government introduced harsh limits on energy-intensive Bitcoin mining. As a result, BitFUFU plans to expand its mining facilities in North America.
Meanwhile, Bitmain recently launched AntSentry International, the global version of the cloud-based operation and maintenance management system. The new version helps cryptocurrency miners and data centers across the world to gain a competitive advantage. The new version brings multiple functions, including batch operations, real-time miner monitoring and automatic maintenance to customers worldwide. AntSentry is compatible with multiple mining pools including F2Pool, HuobiPool, AntPool and BTC.com. Bitmain has been working to expand the presence of AntSentry to international regions like the US, Europe and Western Asia.
