What happened to Bitmain? The controversy surrounding the mining farm continues to escalate. In his "Another Letter to All Colleagues" on July 17, Wu Jihan revealed for the first time that Zhan Ketuan's group recently launched a "raid" at the Zhenglan Banner mine in the middle of the night and illegally transferred more than 10,000 supercomputer servers hosted at the mine. Their whereabouts are currently unknown and they may have been resold. Then the cloud mining company BitDeer revealed the subsequent impact of this incident: Affected by the recent illegal transfer of all mining machines at the Zhenglanqi Mine of Bitmain Group, some mining machines providing services for BitDeer are still missing, resulting in the inability to properly execute BitDeer's currently running and pending ZEC (Z11), ETH, and ETC related packages. The following is the original statement from Bitmain Group regarding the Zhenglanqi mining farm incident: "From July 15 to 16, 2020, former mining center employees Ren Gang, Wang Wei and others illegally transferred mining machine assets worth over 100 million yuan from the Zhenglan Banner Mine. The whereabouts of the assets are currently unknown. Such bad behavior has caused serious economic losses to the company and its customers. At the same time, the two and their accomplices also committed other illegal acts against on-site employees. At present, the company has confirmed the basic facts and the so-called local cooperation personnel. The company will never tolerate any behavior that is detrimental to the interests of the company and its customers, and will take all necessary legal measures to investigate to the end. What awaits them will be severe punishment by law." On the 23rd, the Antminer pre-sale public account posted again: From the evening of July 15 to July 16, 2020, about 10,000 mining machines hosted by Inner Mongolia Maker Cloud Computing Co., Ltd. (the "Company"), a subsidiary of Bitmain Group, at the Zhenglan Banner Mine in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region were illegally transferred by Ren Gang, Wang Wei and other former employees of the Group's mining center. The Company has reported the incident to the relevant departments and reported the case to the public security organs. The whereabouts of the mining machines involved are currently unknown, and the Company will make every effort to recover them. In the above incidents, the mining machines involved in the case that were illegally transferred (hereinafter referred to as "the mining machines involved") were all Antminers, including S17 Pro/S17/T17/S15/T15/S9 Hydro series mining machines, Z11 series mining machines, and other small currency mining machines and internal test prototypes. The above incident has caused serious economic losses to the company and its customers. If you know the whereabouts of the mining machine involved or related clues, you can contact us via email at [email protected] to assist in the investigation of the case. Since the mining machine involved in the case may flow into the market, it is recommended that you check the SN code of the device you purchased from a third party through https://support.bitmain.com/hc/zh-cn/articles/900001829446 (click to read the original text to jump to this page) to ensure that it is not the mining machine involved in the case and avoid unnecessary legal risks. Why did Zhan Ketuan want to "grab" mining machines? It's simple, he was short of money. He needed money to support taxes, bank loans, supplier debts, and to manufacture mining machines. Zhan Ketuan said at a staff meeting on the 19th that the biggest problem at present is lack of money. Ten thousand second-hand mining machines are expected to bring in about 60-80 million in revenue. At the same time, it can also hit Wu Jihan's finances, because the mine itself has electricity, manpower and other costs, and mining itself can also bring profits. Why did Zhan Ketuan risk breaking the law to "grab" mining machines? This requires going back to the organizational chart. The mining company that was robbed is Inner Mongolia Maker Cloud Computing Co., Ltd., which is also one of Bitmain's largest mining farms. Its 100% shareholder is Fujian Maker Technology Co., Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Beijing Bitmain. Zhan Ketuan is currently the legal person of Beijing Bit. To some extent, Zhan Ketuan "robbed" the mining machine based on his status as the legal person of Beijing Bit, which is legally debatable. Fujian Maker Technology Co., Ltd. is suspected to be the company mainly used by Bitmain for mining farm operations. It has 18 subsidiaries, located in Zhaotong, Yunnan, Lufeng, Yunnan, Lijiang, Yunnan, Gujiao, Shanxi, Zhaojue, Sichuan, Jiulong, Sichuan, Lixian, Sichuan, Qitai, Xinjiang, Manas, Xinjiang, Jungar, Xinjiang, Wuyuan, Inner Mongolia, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, Zhongwei, Ningxia, etc. It can be expected that Zhan Ketuan will continue to fight for the control of these mining farms, while Wu Jihan will strengthen the security of the mining farms. Wu Jihan did not change the direct management of these companies to Hong Kong Bitmain before, perhaps because he felt that it was legally impossible for Zhan Ketuan to take back the legal person of the subsidiary before winning the lawsuit in Cayman. For customers, the core question at present is that about 10,000 mining machines hosted by the Zhenglan Banner Mine in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region were "robbed", many of which were cloud mining products ordered by customers, that is, they have been leased to customers. At the same time, there must be some mining machines hosted by customers. How to define the property rights and losses caused by this part, and whether the corporate legal person's snatching of customers' leased property is a breach of contract and illegal.
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