While Bitmain's IPO might boost the crypto market, cryptocurrencies fear market dominance by tech giant
Image source: pixabay - C_Scott
Plans for Bitmain, Chinese crypto giant and ASICs maker, to initiate an IPO valued at $15 billion will be one of the largest IPO after Visa and Facebook. In the article on CCN - Joseph Young, it was reported that "the $18 billion valuation of Bitmain was secured after the firm closed a $1 billion funding round by Tencent and SoftBank Group, two of the most influential companies in the global technology market".
Such a grand move might help propel cryptocurrency into the mainstream, attract investors into the cryptocurrency sector that is already materializing. The influx of funds from investors and the public could see a sustainable growth in the sector, securing crypto mining businesses and stabilizing the coin market that is currently riddled with doubt.
“Bitmain is truly honored to announce this news and is excited to work with local partners, government and stakeholders in realizing this vision, throughout the initial set-up phase, operations and beyond,” said Jeff Stearns, executive vice president and direct of operations for Bitmain’s North America division.
CCN - Joseph Young
Image source: pixabay - comfreak
In the midst of Bitcoin's price drop, Bitmain was still able to rake in $2.5 billion in revenue for the first half of 2018. Jihan Wu, CEO of Bitmain, is planning to position their company as a leader in circuit chip manufacturing for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Source: businesstimes - Zoe Bernard.
It has already been rumored that Bitmain might cash out from Bitcoin, shifting its focus on AI which is projected to make up 40 percent of its revenue in the next five years according to CoinDesk. Wu told Fortune magazine in June that this business would be similar to Google’s AI-focused tensor processing units. Source: Bloomberg - Lionel Laurent.
Bitmain's mining monopoly was not received well by many altcoins as their mining algorithms were tuned to ASICs miners. The goal to a decentralized cryptocurrency market has been abolished by Bitmain giant. Although China's ban on cryptocurrency is in place, Bitmain remains as the largest manufacturer in mining. It is worrying that Bitmain controls the cryptocurrency market, hodling 22,082 BTC, 1,021,316 BCH, 930,932 LTC, 312,424 DASH and 1097 ETH as stated on a leaked investor deck. Source: CCN - Josiah Wilmoth.
Image source: pixabay - klimkin
Monero (XMR) has already made their mining protocols ASICs-resistant and Siacoin will follow suit. Obelisk, a Boston-based crypto mining company has released a code to exclude ASIC miners of Bitmain from mining Siacoin.
“... We will release the SC1 alternative Blake2b algorithm in the coming weeks. This will give the Sia community the ability to fork and could invalidate all non-Obelisk Siacoin ASIC miners on the forked chain.” in an email sent to customers of Obelisk.
Source: financemagnates - Simon Goldstein
Siacoin's and Obelisk's employees are currently supportive of a fork to render all Bitmain ASICs mining on Siacoin invalid. See the entire contents of the email via CoinDesk.
Monero will also be changing its mining protocol every six months to remain ASIC-resistant as their team believes that XMR CryptoNight algorithm should be mined on any home computer instead.