On Friday, Chia Network Inc. announced that it had submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), requesting an initial public offering (IPO). The blockchain network company, founded by Bittorrent creator Bram Cohen, will initiate the IPO after the U.S. securities regulator approves the filing.
Bittorrent Creator’s Chia Aims for an IPO
Bram Cohen’s Chia network intends to go public and took a step in that direction on Friday, April 14, 2023, when the firm submitted a Form S-1 filing with the SEC. The blockchain and cryptocurrency project, launched in 2018, leverages storage for consensus through a mechanism called Proof of Space and Time (PoST), in contrast to Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW). PoST uses hard disk space as the foundation for its consensus algorithm. Chia’s COO Gene Hoffman indicated that the company had been focused on an IPO since May 2021.
On April 14, Chia announced that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. Chia’s move follows a number of crypto tokens being declared unregistered securities by the SEC. Chia has raised a total of $71.12 million and obtained $61 million in May 2021, in a Series D financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Richmond Global Ventures.
Chia’s native token XCH rose 14.2% on the news, and during the past 24 hours, it has been trading at a range of $39.56 to $45.38 per coin. Over the last seven days, Chia’s XCH has risen 19.3% against the U.S. dollar. However, XCH is 97% lower than the all-time high it set on May 15, 2021, when it reached $1,645 per unit. At the time of writing, XCH has a market capitalization of around $317 million and is ranked 143rd among thousands of other crypto market cap metrics.
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