Ionic Digital Acquires Celsius' Mining Assets and Plans to Go Public

According to CoinDesk, Ionic Digital, a new bitcoin mining company, is purchasing bankrupt lender Celsius' mining assets and aims to become one of the top miners in North America. As part of Celsius' emergence from Chapter 11, Ionic will acquire all of its mining assets, including approximately 87 megawatts (MW) of self-mining capacity, 142MW of hosted bitcoin mining at third-party sites, and the Cedarvale site, which is under development to reach a capacity of 240MW. Currently, Ionic has about 6 exahash per second (EH/s) of mining power operational and expects to achieve 12.7 EH/s once its fleets are fully operational within this year. Ionic Digital plans to go public in the coming months and has filed Form-10 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 26, a first step towards listing. Celsius creditors will become the new company's shareholders, owning equity in the form of common stock. Ionic is not the only new mining company looking to go public ahead of this year's bitcoin halving event, which will see mining rewards cut by half. Most recently, bitcoin financial services firm Swan Bitcoin announced that its newly formed mining business unit expects to go public within the next 12 months. Ionic believes its flexibility and strong financial backing will help it deal with the growing competition in mining. Hut 8 (HUT), which merged with US Bitcoin Corp. (USBTC), will provide mining management services for the new company in exchange for a fee of more than $20 million per year, as well as restricted stock and incentive equity. Matt Prusak, former chief commercial officer of Hut 8 and USBTC, will be the CEO of Ionic, while Hut 8's President, Asher Genoot, will also serve on the board of directors of the new company. Prusak stated that with their substantial mining fleet and infrastructure managed in partnership with Hut 8, seasoned leadership team, and strategic vision, Ionic Digital is ready to make an impact as a leading bitcoin miner.