Chinese Listed Companies and Bitcoin Mining: Partner or Predator?

This article was originally published by 8btc and written by Lylian Teng.Some Chinese listed companies have jumped on the bandwagon of bitcoin mining following the bitcoin bull run throughout 2017, either under the guise of cloud computing or providing mining hosting services, in an effort to bypass regulations considering the country’s tough stance on bitcoin.A recent report indicating that Huatie HengAn, a subsidiary of Chinese publicly listed company Huatie, lost over $23 million for its secret bitcoin mining business has caused quite a stir among investors and triggered investigations from regulators.In this follow-up report, it’s apparent that more listed companies in China have been involved in cryptocurrency mining, though the country is considering a ban on this “wasteful” activity.Per a prospectus from leading bitcoin mining machine manufacturer Ebang, its second largest customer, an anonymous Xinjiang-based company, is very likely to be the aforementioned Huatie HengAn, as it fits all the description shown in the prospectus. It is worth noting that its largest client, Beijing Xincailiang Tech, is a subsidiary of Shenzhen-listed technical company Wholeasy. The firm contributed 17.7 percent of Ebang’s miner sales for the first half of 2018.Varied from Huatie HengAn, who apparently secretly mined bitcoin in 2018 under the guise of cloud computing, Xincailiang has built crypto mining farms overseas and offers miner hos...