#China #Mining #Bitmain 8th May, the administration planned to issue the company license to the legal representative, ZHAN Ketuan, Bitmain's co-founder and ex-CEO who has been expelled by another co-founder, WU Jihan. Then CFO, LIU, who stands for WU, robbed the license--thread

1) This civil war of #Bitmain is launched by WU in Oct 2019, but the conflicts btw these two co-CEOs and co-founders have been brewing since 2016. The equity owned by ZHAN is 36% and 22% by WU, so how did WU dismiss ZHAN with less equity? next
#BTC #mining #cryptocurrency

9) and turn #Bitmain's trading and #crypto asset custody department into a new company in #Singapore which is Matrix. Revenue of Matrix in the first four months of 2020 has exceeded $ 300 million. That's a triumph for WU

2) WU is the earliest preacher of #BTC in #China, he came up with the idea to develop its own chips on mining first and then persuaded ZHAN to join his start-up. When they founded the company, they used a Valuation Adjustment Mechanism.
#mining #cryptocurrency

3) ZHAN took ZERO salary, while WU covered all administrative fees. ZHAN held the 60% equities for the tech team, but these equities will be allocated ONLY IF he achieved 2 major tech development, one is chips.

4) WU used to work in an investment bank, he's the marketing and fundraising guy of #Bitmain. When he was in the investment bank, he helped his colleagues to buy #BTC . And he brought Ge Yuesheng (who used to be his intern) and his family's investment into Bitmain.

6) However, in #Bitmain Cayman, share classes are with different voting rights.
ZHAN and WU as co-founders have super-voting rights. Their Class B stocks = 10x Class A stocks. Regarding voting rights, ZHAN owned 398.9 billion voting rights, while WU only owned 224.3 billion.

8)During the bear market, WU has bet on #BitcoinCash. He invested $25 billion on it, but at the initial phase, the revenue of mining BCH is highly volatile. This made Bitmain lose $8 bil in 2017-2018. Then WU was pushed to moved out the company and

7) ZHAN's super voting rights is a threaten to WU and ZHAN may returned to Bitmain even WU won minority shareholders. Thus, in Nov 2019, WU immediately abolished super voting rights. Ofc, ZHAN asked the Cayman court to invalidate this company decision, but no response so far.

10) For ZHAN, it's impossible to gain power and return to Bitmain. He was blamed by WU of prompted an unmatured 10nm chip which caused high inventory and a high loss. The conflicts btw ZHAN and WU became obvious after the HK IPO failure in 2019, and co-CEO was ended in Jan 2019.

5) Bitmain chose VIE structure (variable interest entity) , this model is known as the Sina model to avoid legal regulation.
Beijing #Bitmain is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong Bitmain whose executive director is WU, so WU can fire ZHAN even with fewer equities.