Today insiders are talking about Bitcoin miner PrimeBlock and its plan to use an SPAC merger to go public with 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp.
The value of the deal, according to Bloomberg, is a cool $1.5 billion.
“The miner said it currently sources about 60% of its power from non-carbon emitting sources and plans to offset the remainder,” writes Aoyon Ashraf at Coindesk. “The power source is just above the 58.5% sustainable energy mix that miners globally are now utilizing, according to the Bitcoin Mining Council’s estimate.”
The SPAC is looking for $150 million in new investment.
Ashraf notes that PrimeBlock has over 110 MW of mining power in North America, and posted some $24.4 million in revenue for the last quarter of 2021.
Nor is PrimeBlock the only Bitcoin miner to use the SPAC method to go public.
Last November, an author identified as NAMCIOS reported on a miner called Griid partnering with an SPAC named Adit Edtech Acquisition Corp. for a deal worth about $3.3 billion.
“Upon completing the transaction, the company is expected to operate as Griid Infrastructure Inc. and list on the NYSE under the ticker symbol GRDI,” NAMCIOS writes. “The miner is expected to receive approximately $246 million in cash from the acquisition corporation at closing; Griid said its existing management team would continue to lead the business.”
As for the new popularity of SPACs, experts point out that this strategy helps to get around some of the intense paperwork of a traditional IPO.
“When a sponsor group takes a company public in a SPAC, they offer units, not shares,” writes an unidentified analyst at Excelsior Capital. “These units include shares, warrants, and sometimes certain rights, and they all go public at $10 per unit. But there is one unique feature that really sets SPACs apart from typical investment deals: you have the opportunity to get your money back. When you invest in the IPO, the money is put into a trust account that’s managed separately while the sponsor of the SPAC looks for another company to acquire/merge with. When that company is chosen and announced, investors have the right to get their money back if they’re skeptical of the success of the deal.”
Will more BTC miners go this route this year? We’ll see.
