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Bitcoin mining firm Bitfury Group is planning to go public in the next 12 months in what would be Europe’s biggest cryptocurrency-related debut, The Telegraph reported Monday.
Bitfury was seeking advice from Deloitte, a New York-based consultancy, to review how ready it is to go public, according to The Telegraph. Bitfury did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.
The mining firm, headquartered in the Netherlands, was valued at around $1 billion in its latest fundraising, The Telegraph said, citing company filings. Among Bitfury’s investors are Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital and Australian investment bank Macquarie.
Since its inception in 2011, Bitfury has been a leading full-service blockchain technology company. It is also one of the biggest private infrastructure providers in the blockchain ecosystem.
In March 2021, Bitfury formed a US-based subsidiary, Cipher Mining, which will go public in a merger with blank-check company Good Works Acquisition. The deal values the combined entity at $2 billion, with Bitfury as a minor shareholder.
Bitfury’s decision to go public comes amid a tense time for crypto, particularly with regard to mining, which has been criticized for its high energy use.
Crypto mining earlier this year was banned in China, which had accounted for more than 50% of the global activity, forcing many mining companies to relocate their operations to other countries. Experts say a silver lining of this has been to spread the bitcoin hashrate more evenly across the globe, soothing concerns that mining was too heavily concentrated in just a handful of places.
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