Bitcoin Miner Ionic Digital Hires CFO to Shepherd IPO

The company, which bought all of bankrupt lender Celsius' mining assets, said new CFO John Penver has over 18 years of data center technology and infrastructure experience.

Ionic Digital, a bitcoin miner that recently acquired all of bankrupt lender Celsius' mining assets, has hired John Penver as its chief financial officer to help guide the company through its upcoming initial public offering (IPO).

Penver, a veteran in the data center industry, will oversee Ionic's financial operations. According to a statement released by the miner on Thursday, Penver has over 18 years of experience in data center technology and infrastructure. As part of his role at Ionic, he will be responsible for driving the company's public listing process and overseeing its financial planning, analysis and reporting.

Ionic's IPO plans come amid a challenging landscape for bitcoin miners, with the halving rendering the mining ecosystem less profitable and difficult to navigate. However, several private miners are still pushing for public listings following bitcoin's record highs earlier this year. Financial services firm Swan Bitcoin is among those reportedly seeking to go public, as are Genesis Digital Assets, which was previously backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, and two units of Northern Data.

Ionic is led by Matt Prusak, the former chief commercial officer of Hut 8 (HUT) and USBTC. The miner announced earlier this year that it would acquire all of Celsius' mining assets as part of the bankrupt lender's Chapter 11 emergence.

The company stated in February that it aims to go public within the next 12 months and expects to achieve 12.7 exahash per second (EH/s) once its fleets are fully operational this year, a measure of computing power directed toward mining bitcoin. According to Ionic at the time, the assets include roughly 87 megawatts (MW) of self-mining capacity, 142MW of hosted bitcoin mining at third-party sites and the Cedarvale site, which is still under development and aiming to reach a capacity of 240MW.

Aoyon Ashraf, managing editor at CoinDesk, has more than a decade of experience covering equity markets and breaking news in the financial services industry. Follow him on Twitter at @AoyonA.

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