What Bitmain Is Hiding

By Chetna Phour

In a recent interview, Katherine Wu, the Director of Business Development of Messari Inc. and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Blockstream shared their views about the Bitmain’s Initial Public Offering (IPO). The duo believes that there are a lot of false facts available in the prospectus of Bitmain’s IPO. Most of these facts are regarding the investments in Bitmain.

Samson said that he knows that Bitmain is not in a good place and it is unbelievable that the company is going for the IPO at this stage. He was initially shocked when the company announced its IPO. Samson further added:

“The information that was coming to light was reconfirming all of the intel that I had on what was going on inside. So I think it was an eye-opener for me and for everyone else in the space to watch this unfold in real time.”

Samson said that there are layers of occlusion in the prospectus of Bitmain’s IPO. Bitmain is trying to hide and misrepresent lots of information. He believes it is hard to understand what Bitmain is doing. Even if you go through the complete prospectus, you will not be able to understand what different things they have, how much is the inventory, etc. According to Samson, the prospectus is not clear at all.

Katherine also has the same point of views about the Bitmain’s IPO prospectus. She said that there were lots of questions which left unanswered. Most of the data which were released in the prospectus were unclear. She further added:

“A lot of details were unclear… I remember summarizing it, and I was like, oh! Yeah, they also do AI [Artificial Intelligence], and someone’s like, what, when did this come in.”

Bitmain Technologies Ltd. commonly known as Bitmain is one of the most powerful Bitcoin miners in the world. The company is based in Beijing, China. Bitmain is the world’s largest designer of the ASIC chips which are used in Bitcoin mining. From 2015 to 2017, the company grew at a rate of 328.2% annually, and in the first quarter of the year 2018, the company showed a net profit of $742.7 million. Though the company is highly profitable but the operating cash flow is still negative.