U.S. crypto miner PrimeBlock said on Friday it had entered a deal to merge with blank-check firm 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. II. The deal was signed at an enterprise value of $1.25 billion.
PrimeBlock has over 110 megawatts worth of data centers across 12 facilities in North America, and mainly targets Bitcoin and Ethereum mining. The deal will be completed by the second half of 2022, and will see PrimeBlock listed on the Nasdaq exchange, the company said in a press release.
The merged firm will be led by PrimeBlock’s current CEO, former Goldman Sachs VP Gaurav Budhrani.
Speculation over the deal has been ongoing since November. PrimeBlock and 10X also said they had secured $300 million in equity financing from an affiliate of asset manager Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.
PrimeBlock joins a growing list of crypto firms on the Nasdaq
PrimeBlock, which generated $24 million in revenue for Q4 2021, will join a host of crypto firms on the Nasdaq. The technology-heavy exchange has attracted several entrants from the crypto industry, including world no. 2 exchange Coinbase, as well as miners Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital.
A public listing allows firms to court vast amounts of public capital, enabling them to grow their operations substantially. But listing also places strict reporting requirements on firms, and subjects them to scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Blank-check firms to face increased scrutiny
Merging with a blank-check firm is a method of publicly listing that has grown in popularity over the past two years, given that it allows smaller firms to bypass the high disclosure requirements for a traditional IPO.
Several crypto firms have also listed through this method, the most recent example being Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, which said it will list on the Nasdaq through a $1.25 billion deal.
But this trend may be soon coming to an end. The SEC recently unveiled new rules to increase the amount of disclosures required by blank-check firms, Reuters reported. The move comes as a rising number of blank-check mergers saw their shares crash in a short period of time.
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