|
After twists and turns again and again, the nearly one and a half year-long "palace drama" of Bitmain, the world's largest Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer, finally came to an end.
On March 4, Tianyancha data showed that the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Bit"), the domestic operating entity of Bitmain, had been changed from Wu Jihan to Zhan Ketuan. After checking the business license information of Beijing Bit in the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, the media reporter found that the legal representative of Beijing Bit was indeed shown as Zhan Ketuan, and the approval date was March 2.
Bitmain told the media that Jihan Wu is currently the chairman of Bitmain Group. The business information of Beijing Bit displayed in the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System
Since the palace fight between the two founders, Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan, in October 2019, the legal representative of Beijing Bit has been in rotation, first from Zhan Ketuan to Wu Jihan, then to Liu Luyao in January 2020, then to Zhan Ketuan in May 2020, and then to Wu Jihan in September 2020. Until now, Zhan Ketuan has taken power again and has resumed his role as the legal representative.
Prior to the change of legal representative, media reported that Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan reached a settlement agreement in December 2020, which included Wu Jihan's resignation from the position of CEO and chairman of Bitmain; Zhan Ketuan acquired almost half of his shares for US$600 million; BitDeer and overseas mining farms will be separated from Bitmain, and Wu Jihan will serve as the chairman of Bitdeer, which produces cloud computing products; Wu Jihan nominated Zhu Xiang and Liu Jianchun as directors, responsible for risk control and internal audit duties.
Regarding the content of the above settlement agreement, Bitmain told the media that "the settlement agreement is a trade secret and it is not convenient to disclose it at this time."
It can be seen that Wu Jihan sent a tweet with a password on January 26, which read "Regarding the Settlement Agreement between the Two Founders of Bitmain". At present, Wu Jihan's Twitter introduction is "Chairman of the Board of Directors of BitDeer, Co-founder of Bitmain and Matrixport". Tianyancha data shows that in addition to the change of legal representative, manager and executive director from Wu Jihan to Zhan Ketuan, the supervisor of Beijing Bitmain was changed from Ge Yuesheng to Zhu Xiang.
The industry background for the reconciliation between Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan is that the price of Bitcoin has been rising strongly since the end of October 2020, quickly breaking through 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000 US dollars from 11,000 US dollars, and reaching the 50,000 US dollar mark on February 16. Affected by this, Bitcoin mining machines are hard to come by and the price has also risen.
Beijing Bit was co-founded by Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan in October 2013. After that, an overseas holding structure was established for overseas listing. Specifically, BitMain Technologies Holding Company (hereinafter referred to as Cayman Company, i.e. the proposed listing entity) registered in the Cayman Islands wholly owns Bitmain Technologies Limited (hereinafter referred to as Hong Kong Bit) registered in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Bit wholly owns Beijing Bit. At present, Beijing Bit is mainly responsible for research and development and management. According to the previous Bitmain Hong Kong listing documents, Zhan Ketuan is the largest shareholder, holding 36% of the shares, and Wu Jihan holds 20.25%.
Wu Jihan’s “coup”
As former partners in battle, Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan have long served as the company's co-chairmen and co-CEOs, jointly managing Bitmain in a "dual CEO" model and responsible for the company's overall strategic planning and business policies. The two have worked together through the ups and downs of the early days and witnessed the rise of Bitmain.
Zhan Ketuan has a senior technical background and 15 years of management and operation experience in the integrated circuit industry. He developed the first generation of Bitcoin mining machines within half a year and is known as the "technical brain" of Bitmain. Wu Jihan is proficient in the market and finance and has many years of experience in the cryptocurrency industry.
However, the divergence of the two sides' routes also became increasingly apparent during the Bitcoin bear market in 2018 and Bitmain's failed listing in Hong Kong. It is said that Zhan Ketuan, who came from a chip background, advocated applying the computing power advantage accumulated from mining to the field of AI and transforming the company into a chip manufacturing company, while Wu Jihan hoped to take root in the field of cryptocurrency, develop new mining machines, and hold a large position in BCH (Bitcoin Cash).
On March 26, 2019, Bitmain issued an internal letter announcing the end of the "dual CEO" model. Micree Zhan remained as the company's chairman, while Jihan Wu served as a director of the company and "retired to the second line." Only seven months later, Jihan Wu launched a "coup" while Micree Zhan was on a business trip. He removed Micree Zhan from his position as executive director and legal representative of Bitmain Hong Kong through a shareholders' meeting, and appointed himself as the new legal representative and executive director.
On November 7, 2020, Zhan Ketuan posted a message on his WeChat Moments, saying that his "legal representative was replaced" without his knowledge while he was on a business trip, and expressed that he would take legal action to return to Bitmain.
Since then, the battle for control of Bitmain has begun. Zhan Ketuan has tried to fight back through various means such as shareholder meetings and legal proceedings.
Not only did Zhan Ketuan propose to remove all directors of the company and elect himself as the sole director at the shareholders' meeting on December 9, 2019, but was rejected, he also applied for pre-trial property preservation to the Changle People's Court of Fuzhou City, Fujian Province on the same day, requesting the freezing of 36% of the equity shares of Fujian Zhanhua Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fujian Zhanhua", the domestic sales center) held by the respondent Bitmain.
According to Bloomberg, Zhan Ketuan submitted a subpoena in December 2019, asking the Cayman Islands Court to revoke the decision of the shareholders' meeting, which caused him to lose control of Bitmain and canceled his original 10 votes per share to 1 vote per share.
On January 2, 2020, the legal representative of Beijing Bit was changed from Wu Jihan to Liu Luyao, who also served as the manager of Beijing Bit, while Wu Jihan remained as the executive director. Zhan Ketuan took this opportunity to file an administrative reconsideration with the Beijing Haidian District Justice Bureau on February 12, 2020, requesting the cancellation of the change and the restoration of his legal representative.
On April 28, 2020, the Beijing Haidian District Justice Bureau made a decision to allow the revocation, and the position of legal representative of Bitmain returned to Zhan Ketuan again.
Internal strife escalates and a brief peace <br />The struggle between Zhanketuan and Wu Jihan was once fierce, from "fighting for offices" to "fighting for official seals" to "fighting for public accounts".
On May 8, 2020, when Zhan Ketuan was collecting the business license at window 52 on the second floor of the Government Service Center of Haidian District, Beijing, the business license was snatched away by people led by Liu Luyao of Wu Jihan's party.
On May 27, 2020, Zhan Ketuan issued a "Notice of Termination of Labor Relations" as the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain, dismissing the company's chief financial officer Liu Luyao for organizing, planning and participating in the snatching of business licenses. At that time, the notice did not have the company seal. On the same day, Bitmain's official account "Bitmain Technology" under the control of Wu Jihan also issued a statement stating that Zhan Ketuan had no right to engage in any behavior in the name of the company's legal representative, executive director or manager, including but not limited to issuing notices, letters, instructions, etc. to company employees. The statement also stated that the company's official seal is currently legal and valid, has not been invalidated, and is legally controlled and properly kept by the company.
According to the video footage at the scene, on the afternoon of June 3, 2020, Zhan Ketuan led a team of personnel to forcibly enter the Beijing Bit building located in Beijing Aobei Science Park by picking the lock. On the same day, Zhan Ketuan posted an open letter on his WeChat Moments and Weibo, confirming that he had returned to the Beijing Bit office on June 3, and also issued a statement that the old seal of Beijing Bit was invalid and a new seal was used. Bitmain Technology said that Zhan Ketuan was suspected of forging the official seal and would be held legally responsible.
Only six days later, "Bitmain Technology" suddenly released a "Statement on Activating the New Official Seal and Abolishing the Old Official Seal", the content of which was consistent with the statement previously released by Zhan Ketuan, and all previous statements were shown to have been deleted. This means that the control of the public account has been transferred from Wu Jihan to Zhan Ketuan. Wu Jihan's side transferred the publicity to the Bitmain official website, and the next day stated that the login status of "Bitmain Technology" on June 10, 2020 was abnormal, and the content and information released on that day were false, and were not the true intention of Beijing Bit.
Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan also briefly shook hands and made peace.
On June 23, 2020, "ANTMINER" stated that in line with the principle of being responsible for Bitmain, the two major shareholders sent representatives, with the help of enthusiastic shareholders and enthusiastic third parties, to negotiate on basic issues such as the company's production and operation, and reached a preliminary consensus.
But a few days later, the official account deleted the announcement.
On September 15, 2020, the WeChat public account "Antminer ANTMINER" controlled by Wu Jihan, one of the founders of Bitmain, issued an announcement stating that Beijing Bit had re-obtained the company's business license from the market supervision and management department on September 14. The business license stated that Wu Jihan was the legal representative of Beijing Bit.
This means that Wu Jihan has returned to the top position. But since then, news of the two sides reaching a reconciliation has gradually spread.
The second and third largest companies in the industry have successfully listed. Can Bitmain catch up? <br />After a year and a half, as the world's largest mining machine manufacturer, Bitmain's highly anticipated battle for control has finally come to an end. But it is undeniable that the internal struggle has brought huge internal friction to Bitmain.
Especially after May 2020, when Zhan Ketuan took over Beijing Bitmain and Wu Jihan retreated to Hong Kong Bitmain, the two sides relied on each other, which led to a blockage in mining machine orders. At that time, Zhan Ketuan controlled Shenzhen Century Cloud Core Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Century Cloud Core), the company responsible for Bitmain's mining machine production management and China procurement. Century Cloud Core's upstream chip supplier is Hong Kong Bitmain, which is responsible for overseas sales, procurement and other businesses. If Hong Kong Bit does not provide chips, Century Cloud Core will not be able to ship to customers. Wu Jihan also controls Beijing Bitmain's IT and finance.
Now that Bitmain has ended its internal strife, can it get back on track?
Bitmain told the media that Bitmain Group will continue to uphold the vision of "focusing on computing chips to make the digital world of mankind a better place". In 2021, Bitmain Group will strive to maintain an atmosphere of unity, progress and hard work, continuously increase investment in research and development, improve personnel division of labor, improve business models, and achieve steady progress.
Regarding the listing process, Bitmain responded to the media that Bitmain's listing plan is proceeding in an orderly manner and relevant progress will be disclosed in a timely manner in accordance with normal procedures.
"Before going public, we will comprehensively consider a number of factors including the company's development needs, the interests of shareholders and investors, listing adaptability, industry development, and choose a listing plan that is responsible to investors and the market and is the most appropriate," Bitmain said.
At present, the second and third largest companies in the industry, Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) and Ebang International (NASDAQ: EBON), have successfully landed in the US capital market. On November 21, 2019, Canaan Inc. was listed on the Nasdaq with an issue price of US$9, becoming the world's first listed blockchain-related company. On June 26, 2020, Ebang International was also officially listed on the Nasdaq with an issue price of US$5.23 and a fundraising amount of US$100.75 million.
The Bitcoin bull market since October 2020 has also brought a lot of profits to these two listed mining machine manufacturers. Canaan Technology's stock price once reached a high of US$25.78, up 186.44% from the issue price. Ebang International's stock price once rose to US$13.70, up 161.95% from the issue price. (The Paper) |
