Jihan Wu’s Bitdeer Budgets $250M to Buy Assets From Bleeding Crypto Miners

Jihan Wu’s Bitdeer will be setting aside $250 million to buy assets from crypto miners. The company will invest $50 million in a junior tranche and raise another $200 million from outside investors.

Jihan Wu, the Chinese billionaire who co-founded the Bitmain crypto mining company, will be launching a $250 million fund aimed at miners through Bitdeer. Wu’s Bitdeer has set aside the capital to buy assets from bitcoin miners, which can help them navigate the bear market that the asset class is currently experiencing.

Bitdeer Technologies Holding Co. will invest $50 million towards the effort in a junior tranche, and it aims to raise another $200 million from investors such as family offices, venture capital firms, alternative investment funds, and mining companies. Bitdeer CEO Matt Kong said regarding the plans,

“We can buy the cheaper machines and run them in our existing facilities with stable and cost-effective power purchase agreements.”

Wu is no longer at Bimain, having left the company in 2021. He went on to take charge of Bitdeer, a crypto cloud mining service platform.

The bear market has hit the mining industry quite hard, and the prices the market is currently at do not bode well for any investments. Ethereum’s switch to proof-of-stake has also pushed miners to other networks.

Bitdeer and others doubling down

Bitdeer has been making progress in other areas as well. The company purchased a high-security storage and display facility called Le Freeport for $28.4 million. The latter is a vault that has been known to serve a large number of corporate clients.

It’s interesting that Wu would buy what is colloquially referred to as “Asia’s Fort Knox,” as it indicates there are big plans ahead for the company. Generally speaking, while the bear market has hit mining hard, miners are continuing to invest in resources to bolster their operations. For instance, miners continue to build data centers.

Miners going through a tough time

The mining industry has tumbled over the past few months, with mining-based assets seeing heavy drops in prices (along with others). However, the stocks of publicly traded companies holding bitcoin or mining it has also suffered.

Despite this, publicly traded companies BitFarms and Marathon Digital have committed to increasing their capacity by the end of the year. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy is increasing its bitcoin holdings. It’s clear that these companies are expecting a turn in fortunes in the medium-term future.