On Jan 8, the Bloomberg reported that Canaan Creative, China’s second-largest maker of Bitcoin mining hardware, is considering an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S..

Canaan was earlier aiming to raise $1 billion through its IPO as reported by the South China Morning Post in last May. The original report has also revealed that the company would consider listing in Hong Kong or the United States. After its HK listing application lapsed in last November, Canaan is pinning it hope to the U.S. market.

According to people with knowledge of the matter, Canaan’s IPO could be launched in the first half of 2019 in New York. However, the deliberations are still at an early stage and the company is currently in a sensitive period, no further information has been disclosed.

Canaan Creative is a Beijing-based tech company founded in 2013. In 2015, the company received funding from the Tsinghua Triangle Research institute and was introduced into Hangzhou as a key project. The registered capital of the company increased from the initial 100,000 yuan to 300 million yuan, its revenue in 2017 was around 1.31 billion yuan according to its HK IPO filing in May.

The main business of Canaan is the development, design, and sales of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips and derivative devices, providing corresponding system solutions and technical services. In the integrated circuit industry chain, Canaan claims that the company is in an upstream position and masters key algorithms and chip implementation technologies.

Canaan started to dreaming about getting listed since 2016. Initially, the company targeted the domestic market and planned to get listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange. However, Shenzhen Exchange issued thee inquiry letter to the event, which led to the nullification of the listing attempt. In August 2017, the company submitted a listing application on the New Third Board, or NEEQ. But the company withdrew the listing application in 2018.

After hitting the wall for several times, the company turned its head to oversea exchanges. Canaan had filed its IPO application in May 2018. At that time, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank were joint sponsor of the Canaan IPO.

Meanwhile, the other two major mining firms, Bitmain and Ebang has also filed IPO applications with the HKEX in September and June of last year. However, neither of them has received any approval to date. The crypto market crash in 2018 leads to an overall drop in demand of mining devices. Whether Canaan can successfully get listed in the U.S., is still remains unknown.