Bitcoin Miner Hive Blockchain Heads to Nasdaq

Chris Williams

Jun. 18, 2021

The Canadian mining firm will list its common shares on the New York exchange.

Shutterstock cover by PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek

Another crypto mining company lands a Nasdaq listing.

Hive Blockchain to List on Nasdaq

Hive Blockchain is heading to Nasdaq, the firm announced Thursday.

HIVE is excited to announce today that it has received approval to list its common shares on the Nasdaq Capital Markets Exchange, where it will begin trading soon. HIVE will also retain its listing on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX.V). pic.twitter.com/6XyEFfSCL4

— HIVE Digital Technologies (@HIVEDigitalTech) June 17, 2021

The Canadian company has been granted approval to list its common shares on the exchange under the ticker symbol “HIVE.” The launch date of the listing is yet to be confirmed.

Hive Blockchain mines BTC and ETH on the cloud using green energy. The firm went public in 2017 and has enjoyed steady growth as the crypto space has expanded. It also operates in Sweden and Iceland (it previously held a branch in Norway called Kolos Norway AS, though that was sold after the government halted power subsidies).

Hive Blockchain isn’t the only mining firm to win a Nasdaq listing in recent weeks: Bitfarms, another Canadian mining company, will list on the exchange Monday.

Cryptocurrency mining has been the subject of scrutiny recently, thanks partly to Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin payments due to the asset’s carbon footprint. Musk has since confirmed that Tesla would change its stance if at least 50% of Bitcoin mining came from renewable energy. Meanwhile, China has instigated a crackdown on Bitcoin mining, shutting down the country’s hubs in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Sichuan.

Bitcoin is one of the few cryptocurrencies that relies on mining due to its Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm. Ethereum currently uses the same mechanism, though it’s aiming to transition to Proof-of-Stake later this year. Ethereum recently estimated that moving to Proof-of-Stake would make the blockchain 99.95% more energy efficient.

Many newer blockchain projects also use Proof-of-Stake to achieve consensus. It’s still unclear whether Proof-of-Work could help or hinder Bitcoin’s narrative in the long run, but with so many major corporations prioritizing ESG concerns, it’s possible that the ongoing criticisms of Bitcoin’s energy usage have slowed down institutional adoption.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH, ETH2X-FLI, and several other cryptocurrencies.

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