US Bitcoin miner Stronghold files for $100M IPO to fund massive expansion

Pennsylvania-based Bitcoin mining firm Stronghold Digital Mining has filed for a $100 million initial public offering (IPO) with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The firm filed its S-1 form on July 27 and if given the green light by the SEC, Stronghold intends to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market under the “SDIG” ticker.

Stronghold is a sustainably focused and vertically integrated Bitcoin mining company that was founded in 2021. In June Cointelegraph reported that the firm completed two private equity securities raises worth $105 million.

According to the new filing, Stronghold will use the funds for general corporate purposes such as “acquisitions of miners and power generating assets” with the firm outlining plans to significantly increase its total hash rate capacity:

“With part of the proceeds of this offering, we intend to procure an additional 27,900 miners, which we anticipate will bring our total hash rate capacity to approximately 3,000 PH/s by December 2021 and to over 5,300 PH/s by December 2022.”

The firm stated that it currently operates around 1,800 crypto mining machines with an estimated hash rate capacity of 85 petahashes per second (PH/s) and already has more machines on the way.

Stronghold has entered into “three definitive agreements with multiple suppliers” to purchase the more than 27,000 mining machines, which the firm estimates will have a minimum total hash rate capacity of 2,600 PH/s. It expects to acquire 93% of the machines in 2021, and the remaining 7% to be delivered in 2022.

The firm operates what they describe as “low-cost, environmentally beneficial power generation facilities,” and mines Bitcoin by converting waste coal into energy on a scale equivalent to “a large-scale” hydropower plant, and estimates that for every Bitcoin it mines, 200 tonnes of waste coal is destroyed.

Related: A green revolution in crypto mining? Industry answers wake-up call

The Scrubgrass Generation Plant in Venango County is the firm’s first power generation facility, and the firm’s power generation processes allow it to rehabilitate large areas of land that were devastated as a result of waste coal acid drainage (AMD).

Stronghold also stated in the filing that it intends to house the new mining machines at its current facility, as well as at two new plants that it is working to acquire.

The first is the “Panther Creek Energy Facility” — a coal refuse power generation facility under contract to purchase and the second is an unnamed facility that uses the same coal recycling methods, which Stronghold has under a letter of intent to purchase.