Temasek Denies Any Involvement in Bitmain IPO

Investment firm Temasek has publicly denied any involvement in the cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain’s Initial Public Offering (IPO).

The company released an official statement expressing this just recently.

Last month, it was reported that Temasek was one of the chief investors in the Bitmain pre-IPO funding round. The investment company’s commitments for the pre-IPO was said to total $560 million. In a reply to the reports, Temasek remarked:

“We’ve seen commentary about an IPO involving a cryptocurrency company, Bitmain. Temasek is not an investor in Bitmain, and has never had discussions with, or an investment in Bitmain. News reports about our involvement in their IPO are false.”

As reported before, Bitmain claimed it had gotten high-profile investors in its pre-IPO, saying it had a $15 billion valuation in the beginning of August. The deal supposedly included involvement of high-profile investors such as Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent, investment firm DST Global, and Japan’s SoftBank, which possessed a 15% stake in Uber.

Softbank has since rebuffed its involvement, having said that reports of it supporting Bitmain’s IPO were untrue. Kenichi Yuasa of the Corporate Communication Office of SoftBank Group Corp. conveyed that “neither the SoftBank Group Corp. nor the SoftBank Vision Fund were in any way involved in the deal.”

In late August, a source had tipped off that DST Global had not gotten involved in Bitmain’s $400 million funding round earlier in the year.

Despite statements to the contrary from DST global, wording in Bitmain’s pre-IPO investor deck proposes that investment from DST was “recently completed.” The document’s wording in the original Chinese is unclear, making it possible to argue the meaning. However, to the layperson or an uninitiated potential investor, the language would suggest that Bitmain had obtained funds from DST Global.