Bitcoin mining equipment maker Canaan has quietly opened a new door for share buybacks. Management can now use proceeds from selling part of its digital asset treasury, which was worth roughly $130 million at early August prices. The plan was disclosed in an SEC filing on Aug. 4. It gives the company another way to support per-share value, but it also comes with a real tradeoff: every dollar spent on buybacks is a dollar not available to a business that is still burning cash.
What changed
The buyback program started Dec. 12, 2025, with a 12-month ceiling of $30 million for ADS or Class A ordinary share repurchases. By May 19, Canaan had spent about $2 million on around 2.8 million ADSs, according to its first-quarter update. That leaves roughly $28 million of nominal capacity as of May 19. The Aug. 4 filing did not give a newer repurchase total, so the current unused amount is unclear.
The liquidity tradeoff
Canaan’s balance sheet is worth looking at closely. At March 31, it held $43.5 million in cash against $106.4 million in current liabilities. That was down from $80.8 million in cash at year-end. The company had also pledged 905 BTC for secured term loans and put another 100 BTC in a fixed-term product. Those figures predate the June holdings, and current restrictions are not fully known. The point is that headline treasury value is not the same as cash that can move freely.
Canaan’s core operations are still struggling. The first quarter produced a gross loss of $22.9 million and an operating loss of $54.3 million. Net loss reached $88.7 million. Second-quarter revenue guidance of $35 million to $45 million was in line with what the company had projected, but the weak hardware cycle has made the expanding crypto reserve more important to the story.
A wide gap in valuation
The math is rough but worth considering. At 2:55 p.m. EDT on Aug. 4, StockAnalysis data sourced to S&P Global Market Intelligence put Canaan’s market cap at $144.7 million. If you add the roughly $130 million digital asset estimate at Aug. 3 prices to the $43.5 million cash balance from March 31, you get $173.5 million in gross liquid resources. That is about $28.8 million, or 19.9%, above the intraday market cap.
This is not a precise net asset value. The inputs come from different dates, and the calculation ignores liabilities and asset restrictions. It only gives a directional view of the discount. A fuller balance sheet would be needed for a clean comparison.
A well-timed buyback could help per-share value. But for a company with working capital needs, regular losses, and pledged Bitcoin, the real limit is not the authorization. It is whether management can afford to spend crypto that might be needed elsewhere. For now, Canaan has left both sides of the trade undisclosed, so the market is still guessing.
