Hut 8 Mining Corp and US Bitcoin Corp Merge to Form Hut 8 Corp
Crypto mining companies Hut 8 Mining Corp. and US Bitcoin Corp (USBTC) have joined forces in an all-stock merger to create a new entity called Hut 8 Corp (New Hut). This merger, announced on November 30, 2023, is being hailed as the largest merger and acquisition transaction in the crypto industry.
Prior to the merger, Hut 8 Mining Corp’s CEO, Jaime Leverton, served as the CEO of the company in Toronto for over three years. Leverton is now the CEO of New Hut.
The merger will lead to the delisting of Hut 8 common stocks from the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq by or before December 4, 2023. These stocks will be replaced by New Hut common stocks, which will trade under the ticker symbol “HUT.”
As part of the merger process, Hut 8 shareholders received 1 New Hut common stock for every Hut 8 share they held. This consolidation of resources will enable New Hut to prepare for the upcoming Bitcoin halving.
New Hut will have access to approximately 825 megawatts (MW) of gross energy across six sites, which will be utilized for self-mining, hosting, and managed service operations.
The merger between Hut 8 and USBTC received final clearance from the Supreme Court of British Columbia in September 2023. However, the planning process for the merger began in February 2023 and was subject to court and regulatory approval by authorities in the United States and Canada.
It’s worth noting that USBTC was involved in a legal dispute with the City of Niagara Falls in New York due to residents’ complaints about noise pollution caused by the mining operations.
While Hut 8 and USBTC were combining their resources, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of X (formerly Twitter) and Block, took steps to decentralize Bitcoin mining. Dorsey led a $6.2 million seed round for Mummolin, the parent company of a new decentralization Bitcoin mining pool called Ocean. This mining pool aims to provide greater transparency in the mining process and enable miners to receive block rewards directly from Bitcoin rather than from BTC mining pools.
