US Bitcoin mining firm Stronghold raises $127 million in IPO

Pennsylvania-based Bitcoin mining firm Stronghold Digital Mining has set the final price for its initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. at $19 per share.

According to an announcement on Wednesday, the pricing exceeds the previous range of $16 to $18 per share. With that, Stronghold has raised $127 million via the offering of 6.68 million shares, which was also greater than the initial plan of selling 5.88 million shares. The trading is set to start on Wednesday on Nasdaq under the ticker SDIG.

Stronghold, which uses waste coal to generate electricity for its own power plants, expects to receive a net proceed of about $115 million from the offering.

Stronghold is currently operating 3,000 units of Bitcoin mining hardware with a hash rate of about 185 petahash per second (PH/s). It has preordered about 26,150 additional miners, of which 72% are set to be delivered this year. 

With the public raise, it now aims to buy another 55,800 Bitcoin miners to increase its proprietary hash rate to "over 8,000 PH/s by December 2022," per its most recent S-1 filing.

Before completing the IPO, the firm has also acquired a second power station to double its own energy capacity. 

Stronghold Digital is the first Bitcoin mining firm to go public in the U.S via a direct initial public offering as Bitcoin mining continues to attract institutional investments. 

Existing U.S-listed Bitcoin mining firms either pivoted from previous businesses, such as Riot, Marathon, BIT Mining, or went public through merger deals, like Greenidge and BIT Digital. Others like Hut8, Bitfarms or Argo had already gone public in other markets before conducting a duo listing in the U.S.

Core Scientific, another major U.S-based Bitcoin mining and hosting provider, is also going through a SPAC deal in its bid to access the public market.

Meanwhile, North American Bitcoin mining firms have collectively been the biggest winner from China's recent crackdown on the space with record productions over the months and increasing market shares.