Jihan Wu finally leaves Bitmain to head Bitdeer

Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu announced his departure from the company by posting an encrypted email on Twitter.

According to
message Jihan Wu, deciphered by The Block, the differences between him and his rival Micree Zhan “have finally been resolved in a peaceful and constructive way.” As a reminder, in 2019, Wu took over as CEO of Bitmain in Zhang’s absence. Previously, Zhang was unable to recover from office even with the help of lawsuits filed against the main shareholders of Bitmain.

Six months ago, Zhang tried to win back his rights by storming the company’s Beijing office and blocking the supply of Bitmain ASIC miners from the Shenzhen plant. The conflict between the two Bitmain co-founders has indeed led to long delays in hardware shipments. First of all, the company’s clients began to suffer from this, so its co-founders rushed to resolve the disputes.

“After settling all the differences, Bitmain opened a new page with great opportunities. I co-founded Bitmain for 2,815 days, and all this time I have felt the support of many clients and colleagues. Now I hand over the “reins of government” to Mikri Zhang, “wrote W.

In his message, Wu said that Zhang had bought almost half of the shares from other founders for $ 600 million. To buy back the shares, Zhang borrowed $ 400 million from Bitmain and committed to raising another $ 200 million from outside sources. In turn, Wu stepped down from the post of CEO and chairman of the board of directors of Bitmain. Under the agreement, the Bitdeer cloud mining platform has spun off from Bitmain, along with mining farms in Norway and the United States, which will be run by W.

Jihan Wu will become the president of Bitdeer, Matt Kong will take over as CEO, and Zhang will lead the Antpool mining pool, which will also operate independently of the company. This separation is carried out in order to optimize Bitmain’s business model in order to facilitate the initial public offering (IPO).

Meanwhile, Bitmain is actively pursuing its business. In October, the mining company Marathon Patent Group bought 10,000 Antminer S19 Pro ASIC miners from Bitmain, and in December acquired another 70,000 such devices for $ 170 million.

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