Bitcoin Miner Applied Blockchain Plans $60M IPO

Enterprise blockchain firm Applied Blockchain is preparing for a $60 million initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq market, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing Friday (April 8).

Applied Blockchain, which builds data centers for bitcoin mining, plans to offer 3.2 million shares at an estimated mean price of $18.54, according to the filing.

The Dallas-based company, which will list under the ticker APLD, said in the filing it will use the funding “to purchase or lease additional property on which to build additional co-hosting facilities, to construct those facilities, to enter into additional energy service agreements for each additional site and to fund our working capital and general corporate purposes.”

Applied Blockchain constructed its first center in North Dakota, according to the filing. As of early February, it was providing 55 megawatts of energy to customers. The company agreed to launch a 200MW wind-powered facility in Texas last year.

Another Texas company, Rhodium Enterprises, was the first cryptocurrency industry firm to announce IPO plans this year, filing for its offering in late January, only to postpone it days later.

Read more: Bitcoin Miner Rhodium’s S-1 Cites Halving as Bitcoin’s Biggest Systemic Risk

The plan was to offer 7.69 million shares at $12 to $14 each, with a valuation almost at $1.7 billion. Rhodium makes use of proprietary tech and liquid cooling tech to self-mine bitcoin, with a goal of being sustainable and cost-efficient. The company has said it believes itself to be one of the world’s largest liquid-cooled bitcoin mining sites, with 100MW of liquid-cooled miners online as of the end of last year.

This technology, the company said in its SEC filing, “has many advantages over traditional air-cooled systems,” giving the firm a competitive advantage as it can “predictably and consistently mine more bitcoin with fewer miners.”