Bitmain Will Not Receive Investment from Japanese Tech Giant Softbank

BTC Wires: SoftBank has denied its involvement in any partnership with Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain, as was reported by several media outlets the through the past week.

According to the earlier reports, Bitmain had supposedly signed a deal with SoftBank to finance an IPO, which had raised its market value to $15 billion. Chinese tech firm Tencent and the Japanese SoftBank, which also happens to be the largest shareholder in Uber with a 15% stake, were reportedly participants in the deal.

Kenichi Yuasa, from the Corporate Communication Office of SoftBank Group stated that neither the firm nor its subsidiary group SoftBank Vision Fund were involved in the alleged deal at all, and that the reports are untrue.

Officials from Tencent are yet to make any statements regarding the issue. Bitmain has refused to make comments either.

The story regarding the partnership between SoftBank, Tencent, Bitmain was first published by a Chinese news outlet named QQ on 4 August. The publication read that the firm had officially concluded the signing round prior to the IPO. They mentioned by name the firms SoftBank, Tencent, and China Gold as investors, stating:

“The current round of financing is 1 billion US dollars, and the pre-investment valuation is 14 billion.” (translated)

When the story originally released to the public, neither SoftBank nor Tencent made any official confirmations or statements regarding their investment deal partnership with Bitmain.

QQ’s report was rapidly picked by several prominent news outlets, the reports soon raised the firm’s value to $15 billion.

On 11 August, Samson Mow, the Chief Statistical Officer of Blockstream, tweeted an image that showed that Bitmain had allegedly invested in large amounts of BTC Cash. On 12 August, Mow also tweeted 2 pictures showing the Q1 results of Bitmain, stating:

“Why is Bitmain raising capital so fast & only showing Q1 results to pre-IPO investors? We’re well into Q3 now. The reason is Q2 was a disaster. Bitmain is sitting on a massive $1.24 billion USD in inventory & S9 prices dropped by ~85%! Q2 losses range in the $600-700 millions.”