On Friday, April 1, a bitcoin mining and infrastructure startup, PrimeBlock Inc., announced that it was going public by merging with a blank-check firm, 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp II. The deal would value the enterprise at $1.25 billion, including debt, and is expected to close in the latter half of 2022.
The infrastructure provider company operates its data centers and crypto mining operations across its twelve facilities in North America. The 10X Capital (SPAC) and PrimeBlock, which provides full-scale solutions for digital asset mining and full web, secured a committed equity financing facility of $300 million from CF Principal Investments LLC, a Cantor Fitzgerald & affiliate.
The merger should be complete later this year, after which the combined company will start trading on the Nasdaq stock market. Investment banking veteran Gaurav Budhrani, formerly of Goldman Sachs, will serve as chief executive officer of the combined entity. The company was led by Budhrani in the past, whose former clients include Coinbase and IonQ.
The CEO stated, “We are excited to bring PrimeBlock public with the support of our investors and the experienced team from 10X Capital. We believe the transaction will provide tremendous momentum for our next phase of growth. In addition, our partnerships with key suppliers are expected to enhance our ability to rapidly scale the business. We believe we are well-positioned to leverage our infrastructure and technology to provide PrimeBlock’s customers access to the underlying economics of public blockchains.”
PrimeBlock has long been keen on cryptocurrency ecosystems and sustainable technology scaling with its strong commitment to focus on carbon-neutral operations. With this merger deal, the company will advance towards generating employment opportunities, cost-effective solutions, and sustainable blockchain.
PrimeBlock is not the only bit mining company listed on the stock marketplace. In 2021, another American-based bitcoin mining company, TeraWulf, went into a business merger with IKONICS Corporation, a tech company based in Minnesota.
However, PrimeBlock’s intentions to go public via the SPAC merger come when such business transactions are scrutinized since investors shared their concerns over shady internal dealings. For this very reason, the United States SEC also announced special regulations for such endeavors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission will require these merger companies to disclose more information about compensation, sponsors, conflict of interests, etc., making the process similar to a traditional Initial Public Offering (IPO). In an IPO, the general public can buy shares of a private entity on the stock exchange, and the entity can raise capital from public investors.
Circle and Coincheck are among companies that have taken a similar route.
