Swan Bitcoin halts mining and IPO plans, announces staff cuts

Swan Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-focused financial services firm, said it is ending its managed mining business alongside its Initial Public Offering (IPO) plans.

On July 22, the firm’s CEO Cory Klippsten said:

“Swan is unlikely to continue with our Managed Mining business in the near term. Without the expectation of significant near-term revenue from our Managed Mining unit, we are pulling our plans to IPO in the near future.”

Klippsten also stated that the firm was “pulling back from our accelerated spending plan for our core financial services business. Unfortunately, this includes staff cuts across many functions.”

Why is Swan downsizing?

Swan’s decision is surprising, considering the firm recently launched a bespoke Managed Bitcoin Mining services in May that attracted interest from major institutional firms like stablecoin issuer Tether. 

At the time, the company stated that it had spent over $330 million to increase its mining capacity to 7.5 EH. It also had an ambitious plan of increasing its capacity to 19.5 EH this year and about 100 EH by 2026.

However, market observers noted that Bitcoin mining companies have considerably struggled following April’s halving event that cut mining rewards by 50%. Due to this, several miners, including Marathon Digital, have sought different revenue diversification strategies, such as pivoting towards artificial intelligence and mining other proof-of-work blockchains.

Nevertheless, the market is still experiencing bullish sentiments, with Bitcoin price enjoying a rebound buoyed by the strong inflows into the spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and hopes of a Donald Trump presidency providing greater regulatory clarity for the emerging industry.

Klippsten acknowledged that the market conditions are currently favorable, pointing out that:

“This is an incredible moment in time for Bitcoin, with real institutional adoption, an increasingly favorable regulatory and political environment, and the ranks of Bitcoiners swelling in number.”

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Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright

Senior Editor at CryptoSlate

Also known as “Akiba,” Liam is a reporter, editor and podcast producer at CryptoSlate. He believes that decentralized technology has the potential to make widespread positive change.