Is Jihan Wu Really Planning to Leave Bitmain and Establishing his Own BCH Focused Mining Company?
There are speculations that Jihan Wu might leave Bitmain. Already the company has been surrounded with layoffs issues, and losses. If this rumor has any truth in it, it will only add to the injury. The rounds of rumors go about telling that Wu is leaving Bitmain to establish his own company which will focus on Bitcoin Cash BCH.
How did this rumor come into existence? Well, it all started with the latest twitter post by the founding partner of Primitive Ventures- Dovey Wan. His post cited quite a few unofficial sources for basing the statement. The rumored company of Wu will focus on decentralized finance DeFI and the Bitcoin Cash BCH. The twitter post read as follows-
“Jihan Wu is leaving Bitmain, starting a new company multiple non-official sources said so … […] according to various sources, the new company is more like a spin out of Bitmain (so far not sure of the equity ownership structure), with a primary focus around BCH and Defi.”
Hard times are foreseen for Bitmain-
How genuine and credible these tall statements are, it is difficult to vouch for them. Although the recent news about the crypto giant, tells a difficult time for Bitmain. In the recent financial report provided to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) the company’s recent developments talk about the losses incurred by the company. It lost a whopping amount of 500 Million U.S. Dollars in Q3 2018.
Shutting down in the Netherlands and Israel-
Also, there were also reports on the company closing down its offices in the Netherlands and Israel. Last year, in December the company fired more than twenty employees in the Israel office which focuses on blockchain technology and Artificial intelligence.
On the other hand in mid-Feb this year, the company stopped its mining activity in Rockdale soon after Texas Public Radio opened up about the company’s plans to establish around 400 jobs and an investment plan for 500 Million U.S. Dollars. Even after these measures, the company could not manage to resurrect.
Percentage of Shareholdings-
The further reports about Wu departing the company are taking the company sadly to the newer lows. Jihan Wu is considered to be one of the most influential people in the crypto world. With him leaving the company, comes the robbing of a great resource of experience, expertise, and a brilliant mind.
As per the reports obtained from ‘u.today.com,’ Wu doesn’t hold the largest shares in the company, as opposed to his huge media presence. There is another dark horse who would surprise you. According to the pre- IPO documents of Bitmain, Micrel Zhan (the mastermind behind the omnipresent ASIC miners) holds 36.5 percent of shares. Wu, on the other hand, holds his 20.5 percent of the shares. Both Zhan and Wu disagreed on many issues which included Bitmain’s Bitcoin Cash.
Efforts to somehow swim the rough waters-
Last month the company tried to hold the market with its technological advancement with the launch of 7 nanometer Bitcoin mining processor which as per Bitmain offers ‘new levels of energy efficiency.’ The new ASIC stands for ‘application specific integrated circuit.’ It is also called the BM1397. It is an improvement on performance, chip size and energy efficiency for mining proof-of-work cryptocurrencies based on the SHA256 algorithm. One can mine cryptos such as Bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH.) It will consume energy consumption to computing ratio as low as 30J/TH. According to the reports obtained from Coindesk.com, in the announcement the company said-
“This is a 28.6 percent improvement in power efficiency in comparison with Bitmain’s previous 7nm chip, the BM1391. To achieve this, Bitmain’s engineering team has thoroughly customized the chip design to optimize its architecture, circuit, and economics.”
