Bitcoin Miner Cipher Going Public Via SPAC Merger

Cipher Mining, a newly-formed bitcoin mining company, is filing to go public via a merger with Good Works Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

A subsidiary of Bitfury Top HoldCo B.V., Cipher Mining, the newly-combined entity, has an enterprise value of $2 billion and is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CIFR.

“Historically, the Bitcoin mining industry featured smaller, poorly capitalized, less experienced companies that were not fully equipped to manage the underlying price swings associated with bitcoin,” Cipher Mining CEO Tyler Page said in a Friday (March 5) press release.

“With this transaction, we will be able to combine the formidable skill sets and technologies developed by Bitfury Group over the past 10 years with what we believe will be a leadership position on the global cost curve, and thereby create a true leader in the Bitcoin mining industry,” Page added.

The Bitfury Group provides Bitcoin mining hardware and blockchain software and services. Since launching almost a decade ago, the company mined over 600,000 Bitcoin and “deployed more than 500+ MW of computing power.”

The goal is for Cipher to grow as a U.S.-centric bitcoin mining “champion with potential to reach a cumulative deployed capacity of 745MW by the end of 2025.”

Doug Wurth, co-chairman of Good Works, said the company has extensive expertise in the “alternative asset markets” and is confident about bitcoin mining as a method “to gain risk-adjusted exposure to the growing crypto ecosystem.”

“We brought to the table experience in power hosting arrangements, which gave us a clear-eyed view of the advantages of Cipher Mining’s power contracts, and the extraordinary value of its partnership with Bitfury Group,” Wurth added.

Cryptocurrency is slowly starting to move into the mainstream, with PayPal last year agreeing to accept digital currency for purchases from 26 million merchants. Regardless of which crypto is used, the important aspect is getting the rails in place to speed up and streamline transactions.