The SPAC digital gold rush continues

Bitdeer is a world-leading technology company for the cryptocurrency mining community headquartered in Singapore. Bitdeer has committed to providing comprehensive digital asset mining solutions for its customers. Bitdeer handles complex processes involved in mining such as miner procurement, transport logistics, mining datacenter design and construction, mining machine management and daily operations. Bitdeer has mining datacenters deployed in the United States and Norway.

Prime Blockchain Inc., a Bitcoin mining and infrastructure firm, is in talks to merge with special purpose acquisition company 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. II (VCXA), according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The SPAC is seeking to raise at least $150 million through a so-called private investment in public equity, or PIPE, to support the transaction, which is set to take Prime Blockchain public and value the combined entity at roughly $1.5 billion, said some of the people. Terms aren’t finalized and could still change, and it’s possible that talks fall apart.

A representative for Prime Blockchain, which does business as PrimeBlock, declined to comment, as did a representative for 10X.

Shares in 10X rose about 9.60% to $10.73 in pre-market trading in New York.

With mining operations in North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Canada, PrimeBlock has said it aims to establish itself as “one of the leading carbon-neutral mining and infrastructure companies in North America.” 

PrimeBlock, on pace to generate annualized revenue of roughly $100 million, currently mines about 5 Bitcoin per day, operates at a hash rate, or mining power, of roughly 1 exahash (1 quintillion hashes) per second and is growing capacity at 25 megawatts per month, some of the people said. 

PrimeBlock’s competitors include Riot Blockchain Inc., Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. and Core Scientific Holding Co., which previously agreed to merge with another SPAC. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate possible securities violations in a planned SPAC deal involving former President Donald Trump’s new social media platform.

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, in a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler noted recent news reports that Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), which last month announced plans to merge with Trump’s company, “may have committed securities violations by holding private and undisclosed discussions about the merger as early as May 2021, while omitting this information [SEC) filing and other public statements.”

Warren also wrote, “The reports about DWAC and Trump Media and Technology Group appear to be a textbook example of a SPAC misleading shareholders and the public about materially important information.”

She said that the omission resulted in “enriching big investors” in DWAC,” including a number of hedge funds, whose shares exploded in value after the merger was announced, “while trapping retail investors in a stock bubble.” At least four hedge funds D.E. Shaw, Lighthouse Investment Partners, ATW Spac Management, and Saba Capital, sold their unrestricted shares after the deal was announced.

Warren noted in the first week of trading following the merger news, DWAC’s shares rose by as much as 1,657%, but eventually fell back from $175 per share to $56.50 per share.

And as of Tuesday, she wrote, the share price was just under $60 “leaving the transaction looking suspiciously like a scheme in which ‘the salesmen behind all of this should be fine, even if those who fall for their sales pitch get screwed,’ ” Warren wrote, quoting a line from a Forbes article entitled, “Trump’s SPAC Is Screwing His Own Supporters While Enriching Wall Street Elites.”