Bitmain to Buy Majority of Shares in Opera Internet Browser

Bitmain is reportedly going to invest $50 million in the initial public offering of Opera Ltd, the company behind the familiar web browser.

An IPO is when a company sells its shares to the public for the first time. Opera Ltd expects to raise $115 million, according to Reuters, and its symbol on the Nasdaq stock exchange will be ‘OPRA’. The IPO request was filed at the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday the 29th of June.

Time to buy the dip?

According to 24/7 Wall St, Opera will be selling $50 million in shares to Bitmain and $10 million portions to another two buyers.

Background

Opera is a web browser. It was developed in Norway in 1994 and first released on Microsoft Windows in 1996. It operates on the systems of Apple, Windows and Linux. The company behind the software, Opera Software AS, was purchased in 2016 by a Chinese consortium called Golden Brick Capital Private Equity Fund for $600 million.

According to statcounter.com, Opera is the browser of choice for 2.46 percent of internet surfers (for context, Chrome has 66 percent market share, Internet Explorer 7.15 percent).

Bitmain is a cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturer from China. It operates several mining pools which, combined, mine almost half of the world’s Bitcoin. It has offices around the world and boasts annual revenue of billions of dollars.

The business was valued at $12 billion last week after raising hundred of millions of dollars in fundraising.

Last week we reported that Bitmain was elected to approve blocks on the EOS blockchain. EOS is a Chinese blockchain outfit which despite having only just come online has already raised billions of dollars. Its system is set up in such a way that 21 users are the only ones approving transactions. These users are elected by community votes and are constantly on the chopping block. However some worry that the system could be easily corrupted.