Bitfarms Appoints New Board Member in Effort to Thwart Riot Platforms Takeover

In the midst of an ongoing conflict between two prominent Bitcoin mining companies, Riot Platforms and Bitfarms, the latter has appointed a new member to its board of directors in an effort to prevent a “hostile takeover.”
On June 24, Riot Platforms, which holds a 14.9% stake in Bitfarms, announced its plan to replace three members of Bitfarms’ board with independent directors. This decision was made after the current board members blocked Riot’s attempt to increase its ownership to more than 15%.
However, Riot later changed its course and abandoned its initial plan to acquire all Bitfarms common shares at a price of US$2.30 per share. In response, on June 27, Bitfarms announced the appointment of Fanny Philip as an independent board member.
With Philip’s appointment, four out of the five board members are now independent. On the other hand, Riot had intended to replace the original board members with three individuals who were “completely independent of Riot and Bitfarms” — John Delaney, Amy Freedman, and Ralph Goehring.
Philip is a member of the mining committee of the Canadian Blockchain Consortium and serves as the president of its Québec Chapter.
Cointelegraph reached out to Riot Platforms for comment, but did not receive a response.
In other news, Bitcoin miner Hut 8 recently secured a $150 million investment from Coatue Management, owned by billionaire Philippe Laffont. This investment comes as interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and the widespread adoption of Bitcoin continue to grow, leading investors to place big bets on Bitcoin miners due to the surge in demand for computational power.
Laffont believes that Hut 8 is in a strong position to take advantage of this investment and accelerate its compute capacity. The transaction is expected to be completed on or before July 11, and Hut 8 has already filed the investment agreement with Coatue with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hut 8 is one of the largest publicly traded mining companies in terms of computing power and currently has a market capitalization of $1.1 billion.
As Ethereum phishing becomes more challenging, scammers are shifting their focus to TON and Bitcoin, according to reports.