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Chinese Lottery Firm 500.com Acquires Crypto Mining Pool BTC.com

BTC.com is currently owned by Bitdeer Technologies and former Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 12:11 p.m. Published Feb 16, 2021, 12:57 p.m.

U.S.-listed Chinese sports lottery firm 500.com (NYSE: WBAI) said Tuesday it's inked a share-swap deal to acquire the cryptocurrency mining pool business of Bitdeer Technologies, including BTC.com.

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According to an announcement, the agreement will see 500.com purchase all the shares of Bitdeer-owned Blockchain Alliance, which is based in the Cayman Islands, with 10% of its own shares.

A cryptocurrency cloud mining firm, Bitdeer Technologies is majority owned by its chairman, Jihan Wu, who recently resigned as the CEO and chairman of mining giant Bitmain following a lengthy dispute with a co-founder. BTC.com's pool mines various cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin.

The stock swap announced by 500.com will include the transfer of the entire mining pool business of Bitdeer Technologies, including the domain name BTC.com and the cryptocurrency wallet of BTC.com and is expected to occur around April.

This year, 500.com has been busy making moves to acquire batches of bitcoin mining machines after it announced a pivot to the cryptocurrency space in January.

Mining BTC.com Wu Jihan 500.com

Tanzeel Akhtar

Tanzeel Akhtar has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Forbes Africa, Financial Times, The Street, Citywire, Investing.com, Euromoney, Yahoo! Finance, Benzinga, Kitco News, African Business Magazine, Hedge Week, Campden Family Office, Modern Investor, Spear's Wealth Management Magazine, Global Investor, ETF.com, ETF Stream, CIO UK, Funds Global Asia, Portfolio Institutional, Interactive Investor, Bitcoin Magazine, CryptoNews.com, Bitcoin.com, The Local, The Next Web, Mining Journal, Money Marketing, Marketing Week and more. Tanzeel trained as a foreign correspondent at the University of Helsinki, Finland and newspaper journalist at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She holds a BA (Honours) in English Literature from the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK and completed a semester abroad as an ERASMUS student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is NCTJ Qualified - Media Law, Public Administration and passed the Shorthand 100WPM with distinction. She does not currently hold value in any digital currencies or projects.