The mining tycoon is lost, the story of Bitmain’s self-rescue

Source/ Brain Hole

The original intention of this article was to let readers understand the causes and consequences of Bitmain’s internal strife, but after writing it, I found that rather than an internal struggle, it was more of a long history of self-rescue.

The story is long, so let’s adjust the timeline to the eve of December 17, 2018. That was one of Bitmain’s most critical moments and the beginning of a series of subsequent stories.

01

Set yourself on fire

In September 2018, Bitmain’s financial department warned management that the company’s cash flow had become very tight and that it had to reduce operating costs to keep the company afloat. The blockchain unicorn, valued at more than $15 billion, sprained its ankle while running and broke its horn while struggling.

In 2017, Bitmain made a profit of 1 billion US dollars.

In the first half of 2018, Bitmain made a profit of US$1 billion.

Three rounds of financing, totaling US$800 million.

Net assets should exceed 3 billion US dollars.

In September 2018, Bitmain was facing cash flow constraints and was on the verge of bankruptcy.

With a simple comparison, it is not difficult to see that Bitmain's ability to make money is incredible, and its ability to burn money is even more unparalleled.

How does Bitmain burn money? Does it pile up cash and pour gasoline on it to burn it, or does it hire a large number of employees to stuff banknotes into shredders one by one? The actual situation is closer to the latter.

The following data can help readers quickly learn Bitmain’s money-burning skills.

At the beginning of 2018, the entire market had entered a bear market, but Bitmain's monthly operating costs were rising wildly, from $10 million at the beginning of the year to $50 million at the end of the year. One of the main reasons was the large-scale expansion of the R&D team. An HR who once worked at Bitmain revealed that the company once hired more than 50 employees a day and nearly 500 people a month. Even so, it was still criticized for recruiting too slowly. The cash consumption in this regard was about $250 million.

Operating costs are just the tip of the iceberg. Excessive investment can be a classic case in project management courses. Readers who follow the mining industry will find that Bitmain is still working hard to clear the inventory of Antminer S9 in 2019. As co-CEO, Zhan Ketuan did not listen to the advice or even warnings of the Finance Department and insisted on excessive investment, resulting in a large accumulation of inventory and tight capital turnover. Another co-CEO, Wu Jihan, once revealed that the company's losses caused by excessive investment were about 1.5 billion US dollars.

The BM1393 chip incident is even more incredible. Chip expert Zhan Ketuan invested a lot of money in a failed chip, and finally failed again as expected. From 2017 to 2018, Bitmain had at least 4 mining machine chip tape-out failures, including 16nm, 12nm and 10nm chips, of which the 16nm tape-out failed twice, resulting in a loss of at least 1.2 billion US dollars.

It is rumored that Bitmain still holds digital assets worth one billion US dollars in a floating loss state. In view of the recovery of the market in 2020, we will not comment for the time being and wait for the market to give the correct answer. However, the losses mentioned above are all irreversible.

02

Monopoly

In September 2018, Bitmain’s management realized the seriousness of the problem. It turned out that the company’s earnings could be burned out. I thought it could not be burned out. So the management began to discuss self-rescue plans, and the most reasonable and effective way was obviously to lay off employees.

However, the layoff plan was strongly opposed by Zhan Ketuan. Once layoffs are carried out, new employees who have not passed the probation period will be the main targets of layoffs, and the cost of layoffs will be lower. The probation period for new employees of Bitmain is six months, and the probationary salary is 100% of the regular salary, with no difference. However, since the probation period has not passed, the cost of layoffs is relatively lower. This also means that the department managed by Zhan Ketuan will face large-scale layoffs.

Under the strong opposition of Zhan Ketuan, Bitmain had to temporarily give up layoffs, and instead continuously cut marketing and travel budgets, set up a budget committee, and strictly approved every expenditure. It also cancelled employee benefits such as taxis, breakfast bread supply, drinks, etc., and even stopped the tradition of giving employees BTC/BCH worth 400 yuan every month.

In the face of huge cash flow pressure, saving money on trivial matters was obviously useless. Soon, the management discussed the layoff plan again, and it had reached the point where layoffs had to be made.

In December 2018, Wu Jihan began to organize all the founding members and business backbones to persuade Zhan Ketuan to agree to layoffs, but Zhan Ketuan still insisted on not laying off employees. The persuasion process was not smooth. After many meetings and heated debates, Bitmain executives fell into the dilemma of wasting time and talking to Zhan Ketuan. This process made the disadvantages of dual CEO management of the company begin to emerge, and the relationship between the two CEOs gradually deteriorated.

On the night of December 16, Zhan Ketuan convened a management meeting again. The meeting was held at Fengdu Jiahe Hotel, two kilometers away from Aobei Science and Technology Park. More than 30 managers present were asked to hand over their mobile phones.

At this time, another CEO, Wu Jihan, was on a business trip in Hong Kong, busy with listing-related work.

During the meeting, the core content of Zhan Ketuan can be summarized into three points:

1. Bitmain cannot have two CEOs, but only one CEO, and this CEO must be Zhan Ketuan. Zhan Ketuan said that he met an old leader on a business trip. They had not seen each other for many years and had a good chat. The old leader suggested that the company can only have one CEO, and it must be him. Zhan Ketuan felt that this was a fate and an opportunity given by God.

Second, Zhan Ketuan believed that the company’s cash flow problems were mainly due to the incompetence of the financial department. To prove his point, Zhan Ketuan announced Bitmain’s financial data at the meeting. That evening, some Taiwanese employees began to post on WeChat Moments, saying that the company’s capital chain was broken and the top management was split.

3. If you do not support Zhan Ketuan, the options will be cancelled and the equity will be invalidated.

Upon hearing about this, Wu Jihan, who was in Hong Kong, sent a WeChat message to the management who were attending the meeting at Fengdu Jiahe.

On the afternoon of December 17, Wu Jihan returned to Beijing and negotiated with Zhan Ketuan all night, finally reaching a consensus in the early morning. Bitmain co-founder Ge Yuesheng read out the results of the negotiation. Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan no longer served as CEOs, and Wang Haichao served as CEO. Wu Jihan took the initiative to give in, and Zhan Ketuan served as chairman alone.

The "1217 Incident" had a very bad impact on Bitmain, especially the disclosure of Bitmain's financial situation, which led to suppliers starting to demand payment. The credit line that had just been negotiated with Bank of Beijing was cut off the next day. Wu Jihan's resignation as CEO caused an uproar in the industry and became a hot topic among mining, blockchain practitioners, and investor communities. The media focused on interpreting a series of events at Bitmain and generally viewed its ongoing Hong Kong IPO with a pessimistic view, believing that the changes in senior management had already foreshadowed the failure of the IPO.

On Christmas Day, December 24, Bitmain finally began to implement its layoff plan. This long-delayed "correct decision" was only realized after nearly three months of stalemate. The AI ​​teams in Beijing, Singapore, Taiwan, and Shanghai have laid off more than 50%. The R&D center in Israel was closed, and Shenzhen New Species Technology Co., Ltd., which was acquired only ten months ago, was disbanded and all employees were laid off. Bitmain's top blockchain development team Copernicus was not spared and was wiped out in this layoff. Copernicus and some of the laid-off employees joined Matrixport, a new company co-founded by Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng, headquartered in Singapore.

03

Entrepreneurial past

After the "1217 Incident", Wu Jihan gradually withdrew from the management of Bitmain and turned his attention to IPO and new companies. This was also one of Wu Jihan's major mistakes, as he began to let Zhan Ketuan manage Bitmain alone.

In fact, Wu Jihan had planted the hidden danger as early as 2013.

Wu Jihan, who came from an investment bank, was the first translator of the Bitcoin white paper. He started to get involved in the mining industry in 2012. The disappearance of Baked Cat and the default of Pumpkin Zhang led Wu Jihan to decide to develop chips on his own. In 2013, Wu Jihan founded his own mining machine company. Together with Ge Yuesheng, who was only 20 years old, he found Zhan Ketuan, an integrated circuit designer from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and founded the protagonist of this article, which later became the digital mining giant Bitmain.

Wu Jihan promised Zhan Ketuan that for every successful mining chip developed, he would give Zhan Ketuan's team some shares. At that time, the company founded by Zhan Ketuan was on the eve of disintegration. In order to gather the team together again, Zhan Ketuan promised to share half of his shares with team members. Unfortunately, this was just a blank check. As Bitmain developed rapidly and its valuation became higher and higher, the increasingly inflated Zhan Ketuan almost took all the shares for himself.

Like many startups, Bitmain encountered many difficulties in its early days, and many tasks had to be done by the boss himself. For example, during the chip design and production process in the second half of 2013, Bitmain was in a dilemma of insufficient funds. Wu Jihan came forward to raise funds, met with TSMC sales, and persuaded TSMC to accept the production needs of a startup company. Wu Jihan also participated in the basic design style of the entire mining machine market and the selection of thermodynamic parameters of the heat sink in the Antminer S1.

In 2014, Wu Jihan discovered that the company, which was run independently by Zhan Ketuan, had huge problems. Some dangerous actions forced Wu Jihan to continue to participate in the management of the company.

At that time, Bitmain's mining chips had just achieved a certain lead in the standard design process. Wu Jihan believed that the next step must be to develop fully customized technology, but Zhan Ketuan planned to invest resources in the research of mobile payment chips.

Zhan Ketuan met a mysterious man from the Central Security Bureau who claimed that he could manipulate the central government's decision-making process on the next-generation mobile payment cryptography standards, but this direction is very likely to cause Bitmain to lose the leading advantage it had just gained in the mining machine market.

Wu Jihan said that as a graduate of the School of Economics, he relied on his little memory of physics competitions in high school and the knowledge reserve of a computer technology amateur to search various materials and papers on databases and Google every day, learn theories related to full customization, and go to Zhan Ketuan to do the persuasion work.

Fortunately, Zhan Ketuan finally listened to Wu Jihan’s advice on the direction of fully customized technology. Bitmain quickly integrated the technology of American and Russian technical experts recommended by Wu Jihan, greatly improving the design level of chips and complete machines.

In 2015, Wu Jihan suggested Zhan Ketuan to consider artificial intelligence. But Zhan Ketuan was not interested in this and preferred the CPU direction. After a sleepless night of research and in-depth analysis by the Bitmain investment team, Zhan Ketuan finally agreed with this direction. Unfortunately, Bitmain only officially invested in the relevant direction after the Chen Tianshi brothers made major breakthroughs in theory and practice, which was still a step behind.

In the two years from 2016 to 2017, Bitmain's operating performance has achieved rapid development, becoming a unique super unicorn in the blockchain industry. According to Frost & Sullivan, based on 2017 revenue, Bitmain Technology Holdings is the second largest fabless chip design company in China and the tenth largest in the world, and the fourth largest fabless ASIC chip design company in the world, accounting for 74.5% of the global market share.

However, a huge crisis had already been hidden in the early stages of the business.

Zhan Ketuan exposed his weakness of extremely lacking business understanding in making important decisions. But every mistake he made was blocked by the company's core employees. His overconfidence in his management ability led to many obstacles in the management process, which led to the gradual intensification of conflicts and the management differences between the two founders became more serious.

04

Mine Trek

The conflict between the two broke out completely on December 17, 2018. Zhan Ketuan used extreme means to force the management to compromise with him by canceling his stock options, so as to achieve his goal of controlling the company alone. Wu Jihan returned to Beijing from Hong Kong overnight and negotiated with Zhan Ketuan all night. In the end, the two resigned as CEOs, Wu Jihan retired, and Zhan Ketuan enjoyed the rights of the chairman alone in exchange for the implementation of the layoff plan.

It can be predicted that Wu Jihan's voluntary concession has exacerbated Zhan Ketuan's arbitrary management behavior.

A Bitmain employee evaluated Zhan Ketuan’s management skills and summarized them in two letters - SM.

After becoming the sole person in charge of the company, Zhan Ketuan quickly "rectified" the department under Wu Jihan's charge as the chairman. He guided the sales of mining machines at a dinner party and pointed out earnestly that sales performance is not due to sales ability, but to the company giving opportunities. He took two mining machine sales leaders as examples, saying that if the company had not given them opportunities, they would still be losers. In addition, Zhan Ketuan also guided the sales on how to toast and taught them the wine table culture and experience.

After the dinner, Zhan Ketuan concluded that Bitmain’s sales were too poor and needed to be injected with Huawei’s management blood to drive the company’s progress. Soon, the marketing director from Huawei officially took over Bitmain’s sales, ushering in the era of Antminer brand premium.

In order to further understand and guide the sales work, Zhan Ketuan asked to meet the customer together with the sales. During the negotiation process, Zhan Ketuan had a heated discussion with the customer on the issue of Chinese and Western medicine, and also asked the sales whether he could provide 10,000 machines when the production capacity was insufficient.

Although the sales requirements are strict, Zhan Ketuan has provided a lot of convenience for "Continental Ark". In addition to selling mining machines at a more favorable price, he also hosted Bitmain's mining machines in Wang Ming's mining farm at a higher electricity price than the market price. It is reported that Zhan Ketuan and Wang Ming are both shareholders of Continental Ark.

The new sales strategy of Huawei executives also brought about very obvious changes to Bitmain. The self-righteous brand premium reduced the cost-effectiveness of Antminers, causing competing products to begin to erode Bitmain's market share. When they found that the strategy was wrong and began to cut prices, they found that the mining machine market was already saturated and miners' purchasing demand decreased.

What is more dangerous than the sales strategy is that the technical advantages of Antminer are being overtaken by competitors, and even surpassed at one point. At the same time, the two mining pools under Bitmain have also lost their first and second positions. The AI ​​business that Wu Jihan had high hopes for and Zhan Ketuan personally supervised has become a laughing stock in the industry. Not only has it failed to make a profit, it has also almost brought down Bitmain.

Blindly introducing Huawei executives to important positions completely destroyed the cultural foundation of the company. The bureaucratic style within Bitmain began to corrupt from the top to the ordinary employees. Zhan Ketuan was unaware of this and was still keen on recruiting employees with Huawei backgrounds, imitating Huawei's organizational structure and strategy, letting HR do sales and R&D do HR.

The organizational restructuring in October 2019 was the trigger for Zhan Ketuan to completely anger the management of Bitmain. This time, Zhan Ketuan completely marginalized the veteran employees of Bitmain and suddenly promoted some "paratroopers" who had just joined the company to the position of business line manager. The former managers needed to report to the new employees. The two managers who were originally at the same level became superiors and subordinates. The operations and development of different business lines were merged into one large department. The reporting process became more cumbersome and the relationship between employees became delicate.

If the organizational structure adjustment is officially implemented, as expected, Bitmain will lose a large number of core employees, especially the blockchain business line, which will be the hardest hit area.

05

Coming back from the wind

On October 29, 2019, Wu Jihan urgently convened a general meeting of all employees. Prior to this, the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain had been changed to Wu Jihan, including the parent companies Hong Kong Bitmain and Cayman Bitmain. Wu Jihan stood in the lobby of Building 25 B1 and announced that Zhan Ketuan had been relieved of all his duties. No employee in the Bitmain Group was allowed to follow Zhan Ketuan's instructions or attend any meeting convened by Zhan Ketuan. If there is any violation, the company will demote or dismiss the employee according to the severity of the violation. If the company suffers losses during the process, the company will hold the employee accountable.

The speech is very long, but can be summarized as follows:

1. Zhan Ketuan has been dismissed from all his positions. Also fired was Wang Zhi, the former Huawei HR who was introduced by Zhan Ketuan at the end of 2018. Wang Zhi had a very bad reputation in Bitmain and was ridiculed by employees as the "Nine Thousand Years Old".

2. Zhan Ketuan’s ability to control the company’s option incentive plan has disappeared, and he can no longer cancel employees’ options at will.

3. The organizational structure adjustment plan led by Zhan Ketuan has been suspended.

4. We are optimistic about the future of AI business, but the prerequisite is that the main business can continue to make profits to support the company's continued investment in AI business.

During his speech, Wu Jihan also told employees the whole story of the "December 17th Incident" and bluntly stated that the company's condition was not good. If no further measures were taken, Bitmain would most likely go bankrupt in three quarters, and he had to come back to save the company.

Zhan Ketuan, who was on a business trip in Shenzhen at the time, finally experienced firsthand Wu Jihan's situation during the "December 17 Incident".

After his official return, Wu Jihan began to clearly point out the various problems in the company's management and operation, and went deep into each business line to understand the situation. In the meeting of the mining machine sales department, employees actively spoke up and reflected the difficulties and opinions they encountered in their work. The marketing director from Huawei asked in surprise, "Why didn't you report these problems to me before?" Soon the director was interviewed and "voluntarily resigned."

On November 2, Wu Jihan announced a salary increase for all employees. Bitmain’s last salary increase dates back to 2018. In principle, Bitmain has two salary increase opportunities each year.

On November 7, Zhan Ketuan spoke out on social media for the first time, describing his own hardships in starting a business and condemning Wu Jihan for "stabbing him in the back". He said that if someone must go to war, then we will go to war with him. At the end of the article, he also set a KPI for himself in 2020, which is to achieve a 90% market share in the mining machine market and to make a small goal of 1 billion from the AI ​​business.

However, the Bitmain employees were not excited by Zhan Ketuan’s article. Instead, he was met with ridicule. Employees who were close to Zhan Ketuan revealed that he insulted employees in daily management, advocated traditional Chinese medicine, believed in Buddhism, drank alcohol in meetings, and practiced qigong...

However, with less than half a year left before the mining output is halved, the market has not shown any signs of recovery, which makes Bitmain's management very anxious. On January 6, 2020, Bitmain ushered in another round of layoffs, with a layoff ratio of about 1/3. This round of layoffs has caused many employees who have just received salary increases to feel resentful. On the one hand, they were looking forward to Wu Jihan's return, and on the other hand, the compensation for this round of layoffs was not as much as the layoffs in 2018.

Zhan Ketuan, who is no longer able to enter Bitmain’s office, once again spoke out on social media, firmly opposing layoffs. We don’t need to lay off employees, and we can’t commit suicide.

During the Spring Festival, the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. Mainland China began to extend the Spring Festival holiday and encouraged people to work from home. Under the chain reaction caused by the epidemic, most companies chose to cut salaries or even lay off employees. Layoffs are the best option to reduce costs. In the first two months of 2020, mainland China's exports fell by 17%. Orders were returned, and the production capacity problems caused by the inability of companies to resume work and the decline in purchasing power caused by the increase in unemployment were like dominoes. When one piece fell, it affected the world economy.

Since the oil price plunge on March 9, the U.S. stock market has experienced four circuit breakers in 2020. On March 12, Bitcoin plummeted 40% in 24 hours, and on April 20, crude oil futures fell 300%, approaching negative $40 per barrel.

Obviously, Wu Jihan cannot predict the future, but this layoff seems to be another correct decision. In addition, from January to April 2020, Bitmain's revenue exceeded US$400 million amid the spread of the epidemic and the collapse of the financial market.

06

burn one's boats

When Wu Jihan tried to get the company back on track, Zhan Ketuan was not at a loss. On April 28, 2020, Zhan Ketuan repeatedly submitted administrative reconsideration and finally rolled back the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain to before October 28, 2019, restoring his status as legal representative.

On the morning of May 8, a piece of news about Bitmain quickly became a real-time hot search, and even dominated the headlines of the day. The way the news was described is worth pondering. At window 52 on the second floor of the Haidian District Government Affairs Center, when the legal representative of Beijing Bitmain, Zhan Ketuan, was collecting his business license, a group of unidentified men snatched the business license from the industrial and commercial administrative staff. An on-site source said that the group of unidentified men numbered about 60 people, among whom Liu Luyao was directing the scene.

This is a skillful piece of news. First of all, it guides readers that Zhan Ketuan is a victim, and emphasizes that 60 men robbed the license as the focus, which aroused public attention and discussion. When the public accused Wu Jihan of lawlessness, they ignored whether the government service center could accommodate 60 men. As for whether Hong Kong Bitmain has the right to appoint representatives to receive business licenses and legal representatives, it belongs to a deeper level of thinking.

The subsequent report by Caixin.com restored the true situation at the scene. There were only a dozen people on the scene, and both sides were equipped with security personnel. Bitmain employees also broke the news in their WeChat Moments, saying that Zhan Ketuan's bodyguards injured Bitmain's authorized person and said in a threatening tone, "Shengguang, be careful!"

However, the subsequent plot reversal did not play a big role, and Wu Jihan's reputation was greatly affected. He went from being a bloody warrior who saved the company from trouble to a lawless gangster, which is a world of difference.

Having won the first battle, Zhan Ketuan began to launch a series of counterattacks against Bitmain. On the afternoon of June 3, the “real men” under Zhan Ketuan pried open the back door of Bitmain’s office in Beijing and officially occupied the empty Beijing headquarters.

On June 4, Zhan Ketuan called on Bitmain employees to return to work and promised to increase the company's market value to more than $50 billion within three to five years. After making this promise, Zhan Ketuan began to contact employees by phone, trying to buy out their options at a valuation of $4 billion.

Subsequently, Zhan Ketuan recalled his direct Huawei executives and issued a series of personnel appointments and dismissals. As of June 9, Zhan Ketuan successively dismissed Liu Luyao, CFO of Bitmain, and Wang Wenguang, head of the mining center. Liu Luyao was responsible for controlling Bitmain's IPO plan. At the same time, he also appointed Ma Yanwu as HR director, Ren Gang as head of the mining center, Sun Yonggang as head of the supply chain, Gu Ling as financial director, and Zhu Bin as head of the mining machine business department. Zhu Bin is the Huawei executive who was interviewed and resigned mentioned in the previous article. During his tenure, he increased the market share of Antminer from 90% to 50%, and was complained by a large number of miners. Internal employees once speculated that he might be a spy sent by a competing company.

In addition to recalling Huawei executives to manage the building, Zhan Ketuan also urged employees to return to work. Those who returned to work on the same day could receive a 10,000 yuan red envelope, which would be halved the next day. Zhan Ketuan showed a very cordial side. Every time the elevator door opened, he could meet Zhan's scorching gaze, shake hands, take photos, and receive money. Since there was no personnel information, Zhan Ketuan did not know whether the people who received the money were Bitmain employees, and these people did not return to work the next day.

When the gentle touch didn’t work, Zhan Ketuan began to force employees to return to work, otherwise they would be fired. Seeing that there were still few people responding, Zhan Ketuan regained his self-esteem and began to harass and threaten employees through text messages, phone calls, EMS, and emails, issuing multiple threats such as firing employees, stopping social security payments, and stopping salary payments. He even used the personal information of employees stored in Beijing Bit to go to employees’ homes and threaten them, demanding that they “hand over their work” and trying to force them to return their work computers.

On June 10, the media revealed that Jihan Wu had taken control of Bitmain’s Shenzhen factory Century Cloud Core and prohibited employees from shipping goods normally to paying customers, causing operational difficulties for Bitmain’s mining machine department.

On June 13, Bitmain Hong Kong, the parent company of Beijing Bitmain, issued a statement accusing Jihan Wu of signing a "Sales Agency Agreement" with Hainan Mainland Ark Data Technology Co., Ltd., in which he holds shares, in an attempt to embezzle Beijing Bit's assets.

On June 17, the media revealed that Zhan Ketuan began selling 14,000 T17+ series mining machines at low prices.

On June 20, Hong Kong-based Bitmain officially cut off its chip supply to Shenzhen Century Cloud Core.

On July 13, Bitmain Hong Kong released a "Letter to All Colleagues of Shenzhen Century Cloud Core", which added more details behind a series of desperate operations by Zhan Ketuan in June.

Zhou Feng, the legal representative of Shenzhen Century Cloud Core, is a relative of Zhan Ketuan. After removing Zhan Ketuan from his post, Wu Jihan flew to Shenzhen to have a long talk with Zhou Feng. Wu Jihan believed that Zhou Feng was the right person to manage Century Cloud Core and help the company overcome difficulties, and decided to keep Zhou Feng to continue to manage Century Cloud Core.

This wrong decision played out a game of farmer and snake. When Zhan Ketuan started to counterattack Bitmain, Zhou Feng was also quickly turned against the company and began to assist Zhan Ketuan in seizing customer machines and transferring 17,000 T17 mining machines from the warehouse to be sold at a low price by Hainan Mainland Ark Data Technology Co., Ltd., which Zhan Ketuan holds a stake in.

In order to protect the interests of customers, Wu Jihan had to compromise and paid part of the payment for the goods in advance to the bank account controlled by Zhan Ketuan in exchange for delivery. However, after the other party received the payment of 109 million yuan and shipped the corresponding goods, it stopped shipping. As of July 8, 5,600 mining machines were overdue.

At the same time, Century Cloud owed suppliers RMB 200 million in accounts payable, including RMB 140,000 in labor contract payables for a group of migrant workers. More than RMB 36 million of bank acceptance bills issued by Century Cloud will expire on July 17, and more than RMB 34 million will expire on July 23. It is understood that Zhan Ketuan said he would not repay the money after receiving a collection call from the bank, which will destroy the company's and even the entire group's credit in financial institutions.

This is not the end

By now, Bitmain has been mired in a power struggle among its founders for more than half a year. The office building occupied by Zhan Ketuan is still empty, and most employees choose to work from home. Some chip developers returned to the office with the tacit approval of Wu Jihan to continue research and development to reduce the impact of the infighting on technology iteration and competitiveness.

This giant ship that once stood at the top of supercomputer chips is now turning towards the iceberg due to the crazy behavior of its former helmsman. Zhan Ketuan's madness is not afraid of losing everything, and Wu Jihan's compromise is wrong again and again. Bitmain has tried to save itself many times, but it has never been able to escape from the black hole.

If time goes back to that day in 2013, would Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng still choose to call Zhan Ketuan?

Obviously, there are no ifs.

Bitmain is spinning out of control and sailing in a fog fraught with dangers. Will it head towards the iceberg and sink, or will it find its way back and continue its voyage?

The journey of the mine tyrant, to be continued.