BRIEF: Cango mines 363.9 bitcoins in its first month of cryptocurrency mining

Cango Inc. (CANG.US) said on Thursday it mined 363.9 bitcoins in November, the first full month for such activity after its decision to diversify beyond its core car-trading business into cryptocurrency mining. It added that it mined an average of 18.85 bitcoins per day during the month, as it operated at a deployed hashrate of 32 EH/s.

At the latest price of just below $100,000 per bitcoin, Cango’s holdings would be worth nearly $36.4 million. The company announced its plans to get into the cryptocurrency mining business when it disclosed on Nov. 15 that it purchased $256 million worth of mining machines with an aggregate exhash rate of 32 EH/s from Bitmain Technologies. In that announcement, it also said it planned to acquire another $144 million worth of machines with 18 EH/s of mining capacity through the issue of shares to Golden TechGen Ltd. 

Cango had about 3.77 billion yuan ($519 million) in cash and short-term investments at the end of September. It announced its third-quarter results in early November but made no mention of the cryptocurrency diversification plan until after that. It didn’t say whether it was using its cash to help fund its purchases of mining machines.

Cango operates two car-trading platforms, including its U-Car platform for new and used car trading in China and its more recently launched AutoCango.com site for cross-border selling of used cars from China to other global markets. Cango’s stock rose 3.2% on Thursday after the announcement and has more than doubled since late October.

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