First Cryptocurrency IPO on London Stock Exchange Raises £25 million

The London Stock Exchange has listed its first cryptocurrency company – Argo Blockchain, a cryptocurrency mining company, according to the Daily Telegraph. The company has already raised £25 million.

“Amazon Web Services of crypto”

Argo lets customers mine Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Gold and ZCash with its own mining equipment. They pay a monthly fee and get rewards in proportion to the money they put in. There are three packages on the website – small, medium, large – which are all marked as sold out on the website. According to the report, the cheapest package costs 18 pounds.

Time to buy the dip?

It does not offer any kind of cryptocurrency storage.

Executive Chairman Jonathan Bixby said: “We have launched this service to take the pain and heartache out of participating in the biggest new technology breakthrough since the launch of the internet.”

The company was founded in December 2017 and went live in June 2018, two weeks after receiving approval from the UK Listing Authority. Bixby told the Financial Times at the time: “More than 90 per cent of crypto-mining is done by elites on industrial scale because it is technically very difficult to do…We want to be the Amazon Web Services of crypto.”

It is based in central London but has its data centre in Quebec. Bixby says that the plan is to use only renewable energy in its mining operations.

According to the official documentation, the company raised £2.5 million from registered shareholders in January, and has now listed 53.2 percent of its shares on the exchange. It is valued at £47 million.

Bitmain is also planning an IPO

On the 25th of July, cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain, which controls almost half of the world’s Bitcoin mining and has an estimated worth of $15 billion, received $1 billion in investor funding ahead of its own IPO. Although the expected venue is the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, founder Jihan Wu has hinted at a US dollar-denominated venue. The company has suggested that it will submit its IPO application this month.