Vague statements in Chinese mining giant Bitmain Technologies’ investor deck ambiguously and potentially misleadingly list investors ahead of its rumored Initial Public Offering (IPO).
In a Bitmain pre-IPO investor deck acquired by Cointelegraph, DST Global is listed as an investor, with claims that the investment is “recently completed.”
Henry Yu, a lawyer and legal expert at Hong Kong law firm L&Y Law Office, spoke with Cointelegraph, explaining that the document’s wording in the original Chinese is left vague. While it is possible to dispute the meaning, to the layperson or an uninitiated potential investor, the language would suggest Bitmain has acquired funds from DST Global.
Earlier today, John Lindfors, a managing partner at DST Global, said in an email to Cointelegraph that he “can confirm that DST has never invested in Bitmain.”
Wu said that if an investor used the information that DST Global invested in Bitmain to decide whether to contribute their own funds, it could compel them to ask for a reimbursement. If Bitmain refused, investors could commence legal proceedings.
Bitmain closed its pre-IPO funding round earlier this month, claiming participation of high-profile investors like Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent and Japan’s SoftBank, that owns a 15 percent stake in Uber.
Last week, SoftBank told Cointelegraph that reports of it backing Bitmain’s IPO were also false. A spokesperson said that “neither the SoftBank Group Corp. nor the SoftBank Vision Fund were in any way involved in the deal.”
The fact that Bitmain has not reported second quarter profits further calls the company’s financial status into question. Earlier this month, Blockstream CSO Samson Mow, tweeted:
Why is Bitmain raising capital so fast & only showing Q1 results to pre-IPO investors? We're well into Q3 now. The reason is Q2 was a disaster. Bitmain is sitting on a massive $1.24 billion USD in inventory & S9 prices dropped by ~85%! Q2 losses range in the $600-700 millions. pic.twitter.com/fVYcDRTvBp
— Samson Mow (@Excellion) August 13, 2018
Red Li, co-founder of 8btc, said:
It's reported that bitmain's risk wafer on 16nm/12nm/10nm all failed and lost around 4 billion yuan.#btc pic.twitter.com/4K2wzsJsbz
— Red Li (@redtheminer) August 4, 2018