Jihan Wu of Bitmain fame is looking to buy the distressed assets of Bitcoin miners at a discount, according to a Tuesday report by Bloomberg.
The cryptocurrency tycoon has created a new $250 million fund for that purpose.
Wu plans to raise the majority of the aforementioned sum from outside investors such as VC firms.
Bitdeer, a spinoff from Bitmain that is backed by Wu, will put $50 million into the fund.
The company wants to scoop up cheaper mining machines in order to run them at their facilities.
Bitdeer announced its plan to go public last year via a SPAC deal, which has now been postponed.
Crashing cryptocurrency prices forced Bitcoin miners to liquidate their coins in order to cover operations costs. The Bitcoin price peaked in late November at roughly $69,000 before retracting by more than 70%.
Tomiwabold OlajideThis summer, Marathon Digital Holdings, Riot Blockchain and Core Scientific reported combined losses worth roughly $1 billion. Eden Prairie-based Compute North filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday due to the double-whammy of falling crypto prices and growing energy costs.
According to data provided by Blockchain.com, the value of revenues paid to Bitcoin miners slipped to $15.4 million on Sept. 22, the lowest level since early July, before seeing a slight recovery. For comparison, miners raked in a whopping $74.4 million in late October 2021.
At the same time, Bitcoin mining difficulty recently reached a new all-time high, reaching 32.05 trillion hashes.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin