On May 9, the South China Morning Post disclosed that Canaan Creative, China’s second-largest maker of bitcoin mining hardware, plans to launch IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Once successful, it will become the first blockchain listed company in Hong Kong. A senior executive of Canaan told the Papers News that it was currently in a sensitive period and it is inconvenient for him to answer questions as to where the company was listed.

SCMP stated that Canaan hope to raise raise $1 billion through IPO. Prior to this, Canaan had revealed that the company would consider listing in Hong Kong or the United States. Current sources say that there was still uncertainty in where the company was listed finally.

Established in April 2013, Canaan’s full name was Hangzhou Canaan Creative IT Co., Ltd. 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 now.

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.

Zhang Nangeng, founder of Canaan, is better known as “Avalon Zhang” as he designed the first bitcoin mining ASIC in 2013, which marks the end of computer mining. Since then, the bitcoin mining industry in China ranks No.1 in the world.

As of the end of April 2017, the company sold a total of about 160,000 Avalon miners, which accounted for 22% of the global bitcoin hash rate. According to official data from Canaan, the company’s unaudited net profit in 2017 exceeded 300 million yuan, while the company’s profit in 2015 was only 2.24 million.

Biang Yang, Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, commented on the company’s listing attempt:

“No matter what your chip is used for, you are essentially a chip company and I hope you will be listed in domestic stock market.”

Jiang Yang Of CSRC: Canaan Should Be Listed In China Stock Market

This time, Canaan want to get listed in oversea stock exchanges and there are signs already. For example, in March of this year, the shareholder of the company has been changed from a domestic company into investment by sole investors from Taiwan,Hong Kong and Macao with sole owner of Canaan Technology (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd.

Canaan’s listing attempt failed several times in the domestic market, which is closely related to the current regulatory environment. Last September, Chinese regulators demanded that all domestic crypto exchanges be closed before a deadline. Then the authorities quickly turned to the mining industry. On January 2 this year, a document has been released requesting local authority to vacant bitcoin mining business “in an orderly manner”.