In the winter of Bitcoin crypto mining, the power players rarely bother to hide their ambitions.

Enduring Wealth Capital Limited, or EWCL, is increasing its investment in Cango as the U.S.-listed Bitcoin miner keeps operating in a strained crypto mining economy.

Cango said Monday that EWCL has agreed to subscribe for 7 million newly issued Class B ordinary shares for $10.5 million in cash, implying a price of $1.50 per share.

The investment is governed by an agreement signed on Dec. 29 and is expected to close in January, subject to customary closing conditions, including approval from the New York Stock Exchange.

This is not just a simple capital injection. In the industry, EWCL is almost synonymous with Bitmain.

Shadow Control: From Auto Finance to Mining Giant

Cango’s transformation looks, in hindsight, like a highly precise experiment in using a public-company shell. The old Cango was an auto-finance services provider that had spent years grinding through China’s market.

But since the end of 2024, Cango has rapidly shed its domestic auto business and gone all in on crypto mining. On paper, it is now a global mining giant with 50 EH/s of computing power. Behind the scenes, it has become a core vehicle for Bitmain and Antalpha to channel computing power into the capital markets.

After this stake increase, EWCL’s voting power will surge from 36.68% to 49.61%, just shy of absolute control.

Under regulators’ noses, Bitmain has used a complex equity structure and voting-rights arrangements to turn a “used-car dealer” into its shadow avatar on Nasdaq.

A Dangerous Balance: Computing Power Inflation and the Loss Trap

Why is Bitmain stepping in now? Because Cango is bleeding cash.

According to an analysis of its third-quarter results, Cango’s hashcost is about $39/PH/s.

Current network revenue has already fallen below its operating cost line, meaning that before administrative and finance costs, Cango is losing money on paper with every coin it mines.

Even so, Bitmain has chosen to double down.

The logic is blunt: use cheap computing power to buy expensive control.

At a stage when hashprice is bottoming, retail miners are selling at a loss. Bitmain, with its mining-rig production lines and vast financing capacity, is using “gloves” like EWCL to scoop up computing power resources at low prices and package them into a secondary-market asset.

Endgame

It is not just crypto mining. It is also AI. In its announcement, Cango also sketched out a familiar promise: transforming into an “integrated energy and AI computing platform.”

That has become the standard line this year for almost every top-tier mining company.

The path from Bitcoin crypto mining to AI compute leasing sounds coherent, but in reality it is full of uncertainty.

For Bitmain, Cango is a reservoir of computing power that gives it room to attack or retreat. For Cango’s secondary-market investors, it looks more like a wager: on Bitmain’s patience, and even more on the endgame of computing power dominance.

In this circle, there are no loyal long-term shareholders, only eternal computing power.

As Bitmain pushes its reach to the edge of voting control, what it wants may no longer be individual Bitcoins, but a super chip outside the regulatory walls that can adjust the global computing power map at any moment.

Computing power is power. As for who is losing money and who is left holding the bag, those are often the least important details in this migration of capital.