Sequoia Capital May Invest $400 in Bitmain

The financing was made in preparation for Bitmain to launch the IPO, after which the company's investment valuation rose to $ 12 billion

12 June 2018 1629

Leading manufacturer of mining equipment Bitmain Technologies received $ 400 million from the Chinese division of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. This is reported by China Money Network.

According to the publication, the financing was made in preparation for Bitmain to launch the IPO, after which the company's investment valuation rose to $ 12 billion.

Also, the publication confirms the intention of the company to conduct an IPO in Hong Kong. It is expected that Bitmain will enter the stock market in September, and before the end of 2018 the company's capitalization will grow to levels between $ 30 billion - $ 40 billion.

There have been no official comments from Bitmain at the moment.

Bitmain Technologies Ltd was founded in 2013 and is the largest producer of equipment for mining using ASIC technology. It also plans to expand its operations to artificial intelligence market.

In June, the co-founder of the company, Cihan Wu, confirmed that Hong Kong, or some other foreign market, where shares are traded in US dollars, is considered for an IPO. Then he named Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital among potential investors

Mining Bitcoin Blockchain

Bitmain Wants to Sue $4.3M From Ex-Employees

Tangled cased started back in 2015, when today's largest mining pool BTC.com was born

17 June 2019 87

The Chinese mining company Bitmain sued three of its former employees who allegedly violated the contract to refuse competition. This is reported by Coindesk.

Currently, there are six lawsuits in court: three from the co-founders of the Poolin pool, claiming that they are no longer bound by the terms of the contract with the company, and three from Bitmain, insisting on the opposite.

The operational director of Poolin Fa Zhu in 2015 reported that he and his colleagues suggested Bitmain to open a new mining pool, BTC.com, in parallel with Antpool, which was already available at that time. Bitmain did not support the initiative, and then the three decided to launch it with their own money. Today BTC.com is the world's largest bitcoin mining pool in terms of hash rates.

Poolin was founded in November 2017 for the mining of a variety of cryptocurrencies and is currently ranked seventh among the largest mining pools of Bitcoin. Poolin was involved in Bitcoin mining in July 2018 and has since received 26,825 BTC or $ 220 million at the current exchange rate.

Under the terms of the waiver agreement, Bitmain had to pay the Poolin CEO Zhibiao Pan $ 2,780 a month for two years for refusing to open a bitcoin mining pool. The amount of compensation for the two other business participants is not specified.

Now the company is trying to recover all payments from the former employee, and also asks to impose a fine in the amount of $ 667,000 for violating the terms of the contract. In addition, Bitmain lawyers argue that all Bitcoins mined by Poolin are income derived from the failure to comply with the terms of the agreement, the percentage of which is also subject to recovery. The total amount of the claim is $ 4.3 million.

Poolin lawyers, in turn, state that Bitmain itself violated the terms of the agreement when it failed to pay Pan in due time, and the 26 825 BTC obtained by the defendant cannot be considered a direct loss for BTC.com, since there are many pools in the Bitcoin network, everything of which were able to get this cryptocurrency.