Hut 8 Mining Corp and US Bitcoin Corp (USBTC) have merged their operations to establish a new company called New Hut in the United States. This merger, announced by Hut 8 based in Canada, is considered one of the largest mergers in the crypto industry by New Hut CEO Jaime Leverton. Leverton has been serving as the CEO of Hut 8 for the past three years prior to the partnership.
The merger process will be completed with the delisting of Hut 8 shares from the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq on or before December 4, and the shares will be relisted under the symbol HUT for New Hut. During this process, Hut 8 investors will receive 0.2 New Hut shares for each Hut 8 share they hold. New Hut President Asher Genoot announced the company’s preparation plan for the upcoming Bitcoin halving event and stated that the merger will provide access to approximately 825 MW of gross energy.
Hut 8 announced that it received final approval from the British Columbia Supreme Court in September 2022 regarding the merger with USBTC, but the planning process began in February. The merger was subject to court and regulatory approvals from the United States and Canada.
In addition to legal complexities, USBTC faced a legal dispute with residents of Niagara Falls City in New York due to noise pollution related to mining operations. This dispute was resolved on April 7.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, has taken significant steps towards decentralizing Bitcoin mining operations. Dorsey recently led a $6.2 million seed funding round in the name of the company’s main establishment, Mummolin, for Ocean, a decentralized Bitcoin mining pool that aims to increase transparency in the mining process and allow miners to receive their block rewards directly in Bitcoin by skipping mining pools.