Jihan Wu: The King of Global Mining
Jihan Wu is the co-founder and chairman of Chinese mining-chip giant Bitmain Technologies. He owns 20% of the company, which is worth $12 billion.
Everyone in the crypto industry knows that Wu is a prudent manager of the largest mining pools.
However, some facts about Jihan Wu are rarely discussed in the media.
Little-known facts about Jihan Wu's life
1. Jihan is 37. He is from Chongqing. This is China's fourth-largest metropolis, as well as the country's largest commercial and industrial center. It manufactures more than half of the computer components supplied to global markets.
2. He graduated from Peking University, China's most prestigious and expensive university. He holds two bachelor's degrees in philosophy and psychology, as well as a master's degree in economics.
3. Jihan started working as a private equity fund manager at China Grand Prosperity Investment when he was just 25 years old.
4. In 2011, he translated Satoshi Nakamoto's White Paper into Chinese on his own. It was published on the first bitcoin website in China. Jihan Wu also created a website, which was called 8btc.com (Babite). By the way, it is still considered the most popular crypto media outlet in China.
5. Jihan Wu is known as a big supporter of Bitcoin Cash: he actively supported the idea of a fork and developed a line of ASICs for BCH mining. However, this did not prevent him from laying off 50% of the department's employees in charge of Bitcoin Cash mining in 2018. Then it was discovered that mining brings much lower profits than the profitability calculator estimates.
6. Now the mining king claims that he sees a bright future for stablecoins and intends to diversify Bitmain to develop chips for AI.
7. In 2018, he was listed in the Asian 40 Under 40 as a leader in fintech.
8. He topped Forbes' 2020 World’s Billionaires List as one of the five youngest billionaires in Asia.
9. Jihan founded Matrixport in 2019, Asia's largest financial services platform for Web3 and Metaverse, which manages $3 billion in digital assets.
10. Wu is a single man. He was never seen with a woman.
Nothing strange. His background is similar to that of other crypto millionaires in many ways. But why is Jihan Wu dubbed the “Darth Vader of mining,” and Bitmain a “mining cartel”? And why is the crypto community certain that he is attempting to centralize the market in order to manipulate the price of bitcoin?
Any means are good in the battle for power
This negative attitude was influenced in many ways by the story of Micree Zhan, one of Bitmain's co-founders. Their relationship demonstrated that the young billionaire would do anything to win the battle for one-man management.
Jihan met Micree at university. The latter studied at the Faculty of Radio Electronics and was one of the best students of the course. Wu persuaded him to team up in 2012 to produce chips for mining bitcoin.
They co-founded Bitmain, which grew to become the world's largest manufacturer of mining equipment and the parent company for several brands, including Antminer, Antpool, and Hashnest.
Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan. Source: Twitter
Wu was in charge of marketing and investment, while Micree was in charge of the project's technical aspects.
The company grew to be the market leader, and the sale of ASICs resulted in massive profits for the founders. Because Wu owned only 20% of the company and Micree owned nearly 36%, the profit was not distributed equally. This triggered conflicts because Jihan believed that selling skills were more important than the ability to create.
However, the contradictions reached a tipping point with decreasing demand for Antminer S5, which was developed in 2015 and brought Bitmain billions of dollars in revenue.
Jihan Wu forced Micree Zhan to leave the company in the fall of 2019, dismissing all his roles. Furthermore, Wu did his best to make Zhan persona non grata in the company.
“Bitmain’s co-founder, chairman, legal representative and executive director Jihan Wu has decided to dismiss all roles of Ketuan Zhan, effective immediately. Any Bitmain staff shall no longer take any direction from Zhan, or participate in any meeting organized by Zhan. Bitmain may, based on the situation, consider terminating employment contracts of those who violate this note.”
A letter to employees posted on Twitter read
Jihan preferred to make his own decisions and never put up with disagreements from his teammates.
Micree Zhan subsequently regained control of the shares and restored his rights as a founder through the courts. But it cost him $600 million, which he paid Wu as compensation. Jihan stepped down as CEO but remained as the company's general manager.
In addition, Wu received sole rights to the cloud mining operator BitDeer, BTC.com and small data centers outside of China. This part of Bitmain's business is worth $90 million.
Jihan Wu’s net worth is currently estimated at $2.3 billion.
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