According to their co-chairman Kong Jianping, a company making Bitcoin mining hardware has posted sales of over 1.2 billion yuan (US$ 185.2 million) during 2017. This translates in a profit of a staggering 300 million yuan (US$ 46.6 million). Kong told Chinese media outlet Yicai Global that he anticipates Canaan Creative’s profits to reach 5 billion yuan. This would mean they’d made sales of 10 billion yaun. However, the mining hardware chairperson did not specify a time frame for such a prediction.
Ejinsight, a domestic technology resource claims that Canaan Creative plan to list its shares on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations stock exchange – an over-the-counter way of selling shares in public limited companies in China.
Canaan Creative are one of the planet’s largest manufacturers of ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips. Such components have been tailored towards solving the complex algorithms required to “unlock” the remaining Bitcoin of the total supply of 21 million. The company filed their interest in listing shares on the NEEQ in August of last year.
Canaan Creative itself was founded in 2013 and according to Ejinsight, units they’d sold up until last April accounted for 22% of the global mining hash power on the Bitcoin network. Sales have been steadily increasing inline with surging interest in cryptocurrency since they began selling hardware chips designed for the purpose of mining. The local technology news source claims that of the 400 unique customers Canaan Creative have served, 97% of them are based in China.
However, with news of Chinese hostility towards the cryptocurrency mining industry and so many of Canaan Creative’s clients being located within the country, it seems hard to believe the projections of Kong. Recently the Chinese government have made efforts to squeeze Bitcoin miners out of their nation. Whilst the Beijing government has not expressly banned the practice, certain clampdowns on allowed electricity and land usage, as well as environmental regulation and tax collection, targets those engaging in the highly profitable and hugely power consuming activity.
According to the Financial Times, as part of their agenda against Bitcoin miners, a multi-agency task force has been set up to aid companies from exiting the mining industry.
The clampdown on mining is not the only hostility the Chinese government have shown towards the cryptocurrency space. During September of last year, legislators there banned the innovative fund raising practice known as initial coin offerings (ICOs). On top of this, several key exchanges also ceasing doing business in the second half of 2017. Evidently, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are not currently seen as being inline with Chinese economic interests.
