Stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings Ltd. has acquired a $100 million stake in Bitdeer Technologies Group (NASDAQ:BTDR).) is a U.S.-listed Bitcoin miner owned by Chinese billionaire Jihan Wu, with an option to purchase an additional $50 million of shares within a year.
The two companies entered into a private placement agreement for 18.6 million shares of Class A common stock, raising total proceeds of $100 million, according to a Friday statement from Bitdeer. The agreement also includes warrants to purchase up to 5 million additional shares at $10 per share. The private placement was completed on Thursday, with Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. acting as placement agent.
This investment will support Bitdeer’s data center expansion, development of ASIC-based cryptocurrency mining equipment, and other corporate objectives. The percentage of Bitdeer currently owned by Tether has not been disclosed. Tether did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The acquisition marks a significant advance in Tether’s strategy to become a prominent Bitcoin miner, following the establishment of mining facilities in Uruguay, Paraguay, and El Salvador last year. Tether, which was founded in the British Virgin Islands and issues the widely used cryptocurrency USDT, announced plans in November to invest $500 million in the effort within six months.
Bitdeer, one of the largest public U.S. cryptocurrency miners with a market capitalization of approximately $670 million, is headquartered in Singapore and operates data centers in the United States, Norway, and Bhutan. Bit Deer’s stock price, which had fallen more than 40% this year, rose about 6.5% to $6.20.
Last March, Bloomberg News reported that Bitdeer was in discussions with private credit firms to secure about $100 million in financing. It is unclear whether these discussions are ongoing following Tether’s investment.
Bitcoin mining, which runs energy-intensive computers to secure the blockchain and earn new tokens as rewards, became unprofitable in April due to a programmed network upgrade known as a “halving” that halves rewards every four years. I lost.
Conversely, the price of Bitcoin hit an all-time high in March, fueled in part by optimism about a newly launched Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the United States. On Friday, Bitcoin was up about 0.7% at $68,800.
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