Riot Blockchain Trades All Mined Bitcoin Cash into Bitcoin
Biotech-company-turned-cryptocurrency-investment-firm Riot Blockchain is not long on Bitcoin Cash.
That’s one of several revelations from a recent public filing that provides an overview of the Colorado-based company’s 2017 financial results.
The Nasdaq-listed firm, which reports that it had 3,500 Bitmain S9 miners deployed at a data center in Oklahoma City at the end of March and intends to have 8,000 running by the end of May, said that it “presently converts any Bitcoin Cash mined to Bitcoin on a regular basis.”
In March, Riot Blockchain mined approximately 69 BTC and 44 BCH, collectively worth about $670,000 at the time of writing.
“When fully deployed, Riot expects its presently owned hashing power to be over 110 Petahash, which it believes would rank the Company among the largest publicly listed cryptocurrency mining operations,” the company added.
Riot Blockchain also owns a 12.9% ownership stake in Canada-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinsquare, which recently received a CAD $430 million valuation (~$335 million) and is planning to list its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange later this year.
The company recently acquired a controlling stake in Logical Brokerage Corp., a futures brokerage firm that is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA).
The firm has also said that it is “investigating” the feasibility of launching its own cryptocurrency exchange.
Nevertheless, Riot Blockchain shares are trading well below the all-time high they set in mid-December, a phenomenon that has been observed with most cryptocurrency “proxy stocks.”
One reason for the decline is that the company may lose its spot on the Nasdaq, which would relegate its shares to over-the-counter (OTC) markets, which are much less liquid.
As CCN.com reported, Nasdaq has threatened to delist Riot Blockchain’s shares for violating the platform’s rules. Specifically, the company has failed to hold its 2017 annual meeting of shareholders in a timely manner, which the firm says stems from difficulty achieving quorum. In the filing, Riot Blockchain said it has scheduled an annual meeting for May 9 at its mining facility.
Riot Blockchain has also recently been subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), presumably in relation to its unexpected pivot from biotech to cryptocurrency.
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