Leaked prospectus: Bitmain to file for up to $18B Hong Kong IPO at $40B-$50B valuation in Sept., had $2B in revenues in Q1 and forecasts $2B+ in profits in 2018
Bitmain Technologies, Ltd. is about to go public. — According to documents obtained by CoinDesk, the cryptocurrency mining company …
Context & Ripple Effects
The leaked prospectus is the first hard look at the books behind Bitmain's rise from the Sequoia- and IDG-backed miner of 2017 to a company pitching itself to Hong Kong at a $40B-$50B valuation — roughly ten times what rival Bitfury was reportedly aiming for. The numbers are striking: $2B in Q1 revenue alone and a forecast of $2B+ in profits for 2018.
The arc that follows is cautionary. Bitmain did file in September, disclosing $2.8B in revenue as of June 30 alongside a $422M private round, but by November reporting showed its claimed 2017 profits had shrunk from $1.25B in the Series B pitch to roughly $700M in the prospectus — and by March 2019 the listing application had quietly expired.
First-order effects
- Prospective Hong Kong investors get their first audited view of Bitmain's finances, and the gap between the leaked $40B-$50B ambition and the disclosed numbers becomes the central question for underwriters.
- The disclosure immediately reframes peer benchmarks: Bitfury's reported $3B-$5B IPO deliberations now sit against a competitor claiming an order of magnitude more revenue.
Second-order effects
- Once the prospectus figures meet scrutiny — including the reported shortfall versus the $1.25B in 2017 profits claimed during the Series B — every mining-company pitch to public markets gets discounted accordingly, pressuring Bitfury's own listing math.
- The $422M pre-IPO round's late-stage investors face mark-to-market risk on entry valuations set against forecasts ($2B+ 2018 profits) that subsequent filings failed to corroborate.
Third-order effects
- With Bitmain's application lapsing unlisted in 2019, the pattern suggests crypto-mining hardware economics — tied to bitcoin prices and chip cycles — proved too volatile for the public-market conversion miners attempted at the cycle peak.
- If the pattern holds, mining-equipment leaders stay private or pivot their capital toward adjacent compute businesses rather than test exchanges with cyclical revenue.
The trend: Crypto-mining giants' attempt to convert boom-era profits into public-market valuations peaked with Bitmain's Hong Kong filing and collapsed under disclosure gaps and the downcycle, cooling financialization across the mining sector.