In January 2026, the world's first blockchain concept stock is on the edge of a cliff.
On January 16, 2026, Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) announced that it received a formal notice from the NASDAQ Stock Exchange on January 14 - due to its American Depository Shares (ADS) closing price being below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, the company has triggered the minimum bid price compliance review mechanism. According to NASDAQ listing rule 5550(a)(2), Canaan Inc. must restore its stock price to above $1 for 10 consecutive trading days within 180 days (by July 13, 2026), or it will face the risk of delisting.
This is the second time Canaan Creative has received a delisting warning in less than a year. The last occurrence was in May 2025, when the strong rebound in Bitcoin prices temporarily helped its stock price escape the danger zone. However, with the continued sluggishness of the overall cryptocurrency market recently, the company's stock price has plummeted nearly 30% in the past 30 trading days, with the latest closing price at only $0.79 and a market capitalization shrinking to about $443 million.
Once glorious: from 'Canaan Zhang' to the first blockchain stock
Canaan Creative's story was once the pride of China's blockchain industry. In November 2019, the company founded by Zhang Nangen (known in the industry as 'Canaan Zhang') successfully IPO'd on Nasdaq, becoming the world's first pure blockchain concept company to go public, enjoying immense popularity.
In the early days of its listing, Canaan Creative's stock price often fell below par, but with the arrival of the cryptocurrency bull market at the end of 2020, its stock price soared, reaching an all-time high of nearly $40 in March 2021, with a market capitalization once exceeding $5 billion. At that time, Canaan Creative represented the brilliance of the 'selling shovels' business model in the era of crypto gold—regardless of Bitcoin price fluctuations, mining machine manufacturers could always make a profit.
However, good times do not last long. The announcement of China's mining ban in 2021, coupled with the cryptocurrency bear market that spanned the whole of 2022, caused Canaan Creative's stock price to continue to decline. Even during the new bull market cycle from 2024 to 2025, when Bitcoin prices reached twice the highest price in 2021, Canaan Creative's stock price did not rise but fell, first breaking below $1 in April 2024—something that is almost unimaginable in the traditional 'selling shovels' logic.
Industry changes: when 'shovels' can't sell
The plight of Canaan Creative reflects the structural crisis of the entire Bitcoin mining machine manufacturing industry.
In the competitive landscape of the mining machine market, Bitmain has long held an absolute leading position, while Canaan Creative remained second until 2021. However, after 2021, MicroBT (Shenma Mining Machine) rapidly rose with a better power consumption ratio, pushing Canaan Creative to third place. According to a report released by Intel Market Research in December 2025, MicroBT's market share has reached 15%-20%, while Canaan Creative's is only 10%-15%.
A more severe challenge comes from the comprehensive shift in industry narratives. The excessive overdraft expectations of Bitcoin mining and intensified competition have led many mining companies to begin transitioning to AI computing infrastructure. In the current capital market, the certainty of the Bitcoin story is clearly not as strong as that of AI, with funds voting with their feet towards AI-related enterprises. Canaan Creative's customers are fleeing—many miners are turning to provide computing power for AI projects, directly leading to a cliff-like drop in mining machine demand.
Financial data reveal a brutal reality: Canaan Creative's net profit has plummeted from over $300 million in 2021 to nearly a $250 million loss in 2024. The inventory backlog from the 2022 bear market continues to incur impairment, with R&D expenses and operating costs remaining high, yet market share has not seen effective improvement—under the triple blow, the once 'shovel seller' is now stumbling.
Failed attempts at AI transformation: getting up early but arriving late
In fact, Canaan Creative was not blind to the impending crisis. As early as nearly 10 years ago, the company began laying out its AI chip business. In 2018, Canaan launched the world's first commercial edge AI chip based on RISC-V architecture, the Kendryte K210, primarily used for edge computing scenarios, supporting AI visual and audio processing. Over the next six years, the company released three iterative chips, and its technological accumulation is not blank.
However, the AI chip track has long been dominated by giants like Nvidia and Intel. Although Canaan Creative has technical highlights, it lacks ecological support and large-scale commercial demand. In 2024, its AI-related business revenue was only about $900,000, while operating expenses accounted for 15% of the company’s overall—resulting in a severe imbalance between input and output.
In June 2025, Canaan Creative officially announced the termination of its non-core AI semiconductor business and closed its AI chip department. The company admitted in the announcement that it had been exploring the sale of its AI business since March 2022 but had not found a buyer, ultimately deciding to abandon it to focus on cryptocurrency mining machines and the North American market. This strategic contraction marks a complete failure of Canaan Creative's diversification transformation.
The path to self-rescue: reverse stock splits and business focus
In the face of delisting risks, Canaan Creative has indicated that it will consider a reverse stock split—merging outstanding shares to reduce the total number of shares and artificially raise the stock price. This is not the company's first use of this strategy: in August 2025, Canaan Creative implemented a 1:50 reverse stock split, temporarily keeping its stock price above the compliance line, but subsequently fell below $1 again due to fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market.
While a reverse stock split can temporarily satisfy the exchange's compliance requirements, it does not solve the fundamental problem. Opinions on Wall Street are divided: Rosenblatt Securities reaffirmed a 'Buy' rating in December 2025, believing that Canaan Creative is 'undervalued', with a target price of $2.91; while Wall Street Zen downgraded its rating to 'Sell', arguing that the reverse stock split merely delays the inevitable structural dilemma.
On the business front, Canaan Creative is shrinking its operations and focusing on its core. In the second quarter of 2025, the company achieved revenue of $100.2 million, with mining revenue of $28.1 million hitting a historical high, and Bitcoin reserves reaching 1,511 coins; revenue further grew to $150.5 million in the third quarter, with mining revenue of $30.55 million, and cryptocurrency holdings increasing to 1,610 BTC and 3,950 ETH.
On the hardware sales side, in October 2025, the company received a massive order for 50,000 units of the Avalon A15 Pro mining machines, the largest single sale in over three years, briefly pushing the stock price up by 25%; in November, the company completed a strategic financing of $72 million, with investors including BH Digital, Galaxy Digital, and Weiss Asset Management.
In addition, Canaan Creative is actively exploring the commercialization of waste heat from mining. In January 2026, the company launched a 3-megawatt pilot project in Manitoba, Canada, using waste heat from mining machines for greenhouse agriculture; it had previously signed a 4.5-megawatt mining machine contract with a Japanese power engineering company for grid load regulation.
The macro chill of the cryptocurrency market
The plight of Canaan Creative is not an isolated case. In December 2025, Kindly MD, a Bitcoin treasury company, received a warning from Nasdaq for its stock price falling below $1; BNB treasury company Windtree Therapeutics was also delisted in August 2025.
On a macro level, the cryptocurrency market is showing a volatile consolidation trend at the beginning of 2026. As of January 26, Bitcoin prices have fallen back to around $87,300, significantly correcting from previous highs. The market's sluggish sentiment has directly transmitted to the stock performance of mining machine manufacturers—over the past year, Canaan Creative's stock price has fallen by 63%, far exceeding the volatility of Bitcoin itself.
It is noteworthy that during this cycle, Bitcoin prices have repeatedly hit new highs, yet the stock prices of mining machine manufacturers have continued to decline, forming a stark contrast to the 'same rise and fall' pattern in 2021. The market logic has fundamentally changed: the introduction of Bitcoin ETFs allows traditional investors to hold BTC directly without exposure through mining stocks; at the same time, the rise of AI narratives has diverted risk capital originally flowing into the crypto space.
Conclusion: Canaan Zhang needs a new story
Canaan Creative's current situation is a microcosm of the 'real business' dilemma in the Web3 industry. Another Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer, Ebang International, has seen its stock price plummet from nearly $450 at its peak in 2020 to around $3, a drop of over 99%. For hardware manufacturers, a mature and fixed valuation model means that once the industry loses growth prospects, it can easily fall into a vicious cycle of 'stock price decline → financing difficulties → insufficient R&D investment → loss of market share → further stock price decline.'
Canaan Creative still has a window of opportunity. The 180-day compliance period, $72 million in cash reserves, historically high self-mining revenue, and innovative application scenarios for waste heat are all chips for its comeback. However, the capital market needs a new story—amid AI dominating the discourse in venture capital, simply 'selling shovels' or 'stockpiling Bitcoin' is difficult to excite investor enthusiasm.
Canaan Zhang and his Canaan Creative need to prove to the market: besides manufacturing mining machines, what role can they play in the next chapter of Web3?
What do you think about Canaan Creative's prospects for self-rescue? Can a reverse stock split truly solve its fundamental problems? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments! If you find this article valuable, please like and share it with more friends interested in cryptocurrencies and the U.S. stock market, and don't forget to follow for the latest in-depth market analysis! #嘉楠科技 #矿机 #Binance #Ethereum #市场动态 $BTC
