The organization managed to raise even more funds than it expected.
The British company Argo Mining, which mines cryptocurrency, became the first organization of its kind in the world to succeed in conducting an initial public offering of its shares (IPO). Argo Mining carries out the mining of cryptocurrency for the benefit of customers who use such a service by subscription.
The place of IPO was the London Stock Exchange. As a result, the company managed to raise 25 million pounds sterling (about 32.5 million dollars) – more than it was planned (20 million pounds sterling). Thus, the IPO was also very successful, even though at the time of the initial public offering of its shares on the cryptocurrency market, the average losses on crypto coins since the beginning of the year were 61%.
A total of 156.25 million ordinary shares were issued, which correspond to 53.2% of the authorized capital, which follows from the documents of the organization. The nominal price of one share was set at 0.001 pound sterling, resulting in a total capitalization of the business was 47 million pounds sterling or about 61.2 million dollars. As the executive director and head of the board, Jonathan Bixby, stated, “Argo’s admission to the main financial site of London was the main event in the life of the company. This allows us to strengthen our market position in order to successfully achieve our long-term growth strategy. We are very pleased that our stocks showed such a great demand from investors that give us the opportunity to develop our business in various countries.”
The way to the London stock exchange at Argo was not fast. The company was founded in December 2017, at the height of interest in the mining of cryptocurrencies. Then in May of this year, Argo received the “welcome” from the UK’s Listing Authority to conduct an IPO, and on June 11 began to provide a service – the mining of cryptocurrency by subscription. According to the information on the official website of Argo, customers can get access to the mining of such cryptocurrencies as Bitcoin Gold, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Zcash. The service of cryptocurrency mining was sold in the form of three “packages”, limited in quantity, which were eventually successfully implemented.
Argo has big plans for the future, and Executive Director-CEO Jonathan Bixby has a bold vision of his business – to become an Amazon-level company, but in the cryptocurrency sphere. As Bixby noted, “more than 90% of the cryptocurrency mining is carried out by a small number of companies that conduct it on an industrial scale since mining technically is a very difficult task, funds are needed for mining machines, worth $ 5,000 each.”
With a high degree of probability, this will not be the last IPO of the company from the cryptocurrency sphere. So, the market leader Bitmain is considering the possibility of holding a preliminary round of IPO and, quite possibly, will become a public company. Two more major manufacturers of mining equipment, both from China, applied to the stock exchange of Hong Kong with applications for an IPO.