Bloody Warrior | Biography of Wu Jihan

Author: Jiang Xiaoyu

Produced by: Carbon Chain Value

"Bitcoin has seamlessly embedded a virtual offshore free financial environment into the entire world...Buying Bitcoin now is equivalent to owning a building in Mid-Levels, Hong Kong. Don't look at the mountain now, where there is nothing but trees. Instead, look at the rows of Skyscrapers at the foot of the mountain." These were the astonishing words that Jihan Wu left to the world in 2012.

Wu Jihan has spent nine years in the cryptocurrency field. In these nine years, he has done many things that are dramatic and impressive: whether it was borrowing 100,000 yuan from relatives to buy all of his Bitcoin in 2011, or launching a hard fork in 2017, or "letting go of the cliff" in 2018, or "returning after a coup" in 2019, they are all filled with the hot temper and impulsiveness of a Chongqing person.

Looking back, people will feel sad: if the person Wu Jihan met in 2013 was Yang Zuoxing, a person who was worthy of giving 60% of the shares, things would be completely different; but fate made Wu Jihan meet Zhan Ketuan, and Yang Zuoxing met FC. So all the stories became tortuous and exciting like the landscape of Chongqing.

Chongqing is a city of "big rivers". The Jialing River and the Yangtze River meet here, and the mountains are undulating and overlapping. The winding and open traffic roads are stacked one on top of another, making the whole city majestic and exciting. The Chongqing people who grew up here are also like this.

Wu Jihan, who is well-known in the Bitcoin circle, is from Chongqing. He was born in 1986. Although his family background is relatively ordinary, he has been a "child of other people's families" since he was a child. At the age of 16, he was admitted to the best high school in Chongqing - Chongqing Nankai Middle School; three years later, he was admitted to Peking University from Nankai Middle School. That year, Tsinghua University and Peking University admitted a total of 54 people from Nankai Middle School, and he was one of them.

What is so special about Wu Jihan? -- He was admitted to the best high school in Chongqing and the best university in China. But not all people who enter Peking University will achieve extraordinary success at a young age. On the contrary, Peking University students often joke that there are two Peking University students hidden in one campus, one is a Peking University student with a rich family background, and the other is a Peking University student from an ordinary family. In contemporary society, even if you have a good academic background, it is becoming increasingly difficult to make a name for yourself.

So, compared to other Peking University students, is he more far-sighted? Does he have a more far-sighted view of the future? The answer is uncertain. If you look at Wu Jihan's Renren, you will find that he was like most post-85 campus youth at the time, reading articles in Southern Weekend and liking to complain about the current situation. Although he showed a certain liberal tendency, that tendency was not profound, nor was it so obvious that you would think "he would participate in some kind of revolution."

He graduated in 2009. This year was not a good one. In 2008, the US subprime mortgage crisis spread to the world, and Chinese stock investors suffered the worst stock market crash in 18 years, with an average loss of 130,000 yuan per person. At that time, the Internet became a place for stock investors to complain and vent. The uncles who lost their pants in the forums got psychological comfort by comparing their misery, and also gained the courage to live well. The financial market was in a depression.

Even after graduating from Peking University, Wu Jihan failed to work for a large bank or securities firm. In the end, he went to a small investment firm to do venture capital. It is rumored that this firm was Huaxing Capital, which was established in 2005.

Venture capital institutions in 2009 were not as prosperous as they were in 2014-2015. At that time, there was no trace of mobile Internet, and many people did not even have a computer at home, let alone a smartphone. After the financial crisis, the secondary market was bleak, and the primary market business was also in trouble. From 2008 to 2009, Huaxing Capital "only completed three orders in the whole year", which can be said to be quite miserable by today's standards. (On this point, Peking University graduates who mistakenly entered the primary investment circle after graduation in 2019 and lacked family background may feel very touched.)

If we cut off from this point in time, it is really hard to imagine what great things Wu Jihan will accomplish in the future. However, he was very lucky to catch up with two eras and has since embarked on a path that is completely different from others.

First, he joined the investment circle in Beijing. In 2009, Bao Fan, CEO of China Renaissance Capital, set his sights firmly on the Internet. He believed that e-commerce, 4G and community SNS websites were the three major highlights of China's Internet at the time, and he called the team to bet on the rise of China's mobile Internet and the middle class. This provided all members of the team with the opportunity to access the world's most cutting-edge Internet business models, which was a new world and new ideas that those employees in securities companies and banks could not imagine or access.

Secondly, Wu Jihan discovered Bitcoin in 2011.

Discovering Bitcoin is not an easy task. The early Bitcoin community was very niche, initially limited to geeks (especially cypherpunks). Later, Bitcoin gradually developed its own community, with some programmers participating, and gradually attracted some "outliers" in the financial field who were interested in the concept of Bitcoin. They advocate liberalism, are believers of Hayek and Ayn Rand, and try to create a "Galt Canyon" that accommodates a small number of elites, and Bitcoin is like a natural barrier to this canyon, or the most important key. Some people believe that Bitcoin is just the first step. Next, they should build their own "territory" or even a country on this basis to materialize this "Galt Canyon".

As a venture capitalist with a liberal tendency, Bitcoin aroused Wu Jihan's interest. He graduated from economics and knew the importance of currency as human infrastructure. Bitcoin is likely to be a new type of currency that is not controlled by any government. Its significance is self-evident. He was only 25 years old that year and had enough interest and energy to explore this whimsical field.

Wu Jihan began to dive into the Bitcoin circle. At that time, there were not many people in China who were interested in Bitcoin, but there were not too few either. On the one hand, Bitcoin had already begun to be traded on exchanges, and its high volatility attracted the attention of some speculators; on the other hand, Bitcoin was featured in the famous "Wired" magazine, and thus became known to readers of "Wired" magazine in China, that is, enthusiasts in the Internet circle. Unlike foreign circles, the first people to recognize the value of Bitcoin in China were not a group of programmers, but a group of people who dared to dream. Some of them dreamed of getting rich overnight, while others wanted to create a new world.

01 From Bitcointalk Chinese moderator to 8btc co-founder

The birthplace of any new thing is forums and media. In an era when there is nothing but distant dreams and infinite excitement, forums are the home of dreamers.

Bitcointalk is a gathering place for all early Bitcoin enthusiasts, including Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, and his loyal assistant Hal Finney; at the same time, young man Vitalik and middle-aged uncle BM also hang out in the forum on a daily basis. Everyone discusses the vision, price and future development trend of Bitcoin, and some people share their stories with Bitcoin. For example, the famous "Bitcoin Pizza" incident was first exposed on the Bitcointalk forum.

In 2011, Wu Jihan, who had a crush on Bitcoin at first sight, voluntarily became the moderator of the Chinese version of Bitcointalk. In addition, he raised 100,000 yuan from relatives and friends to buy 900 Bitcoins.

However, for most Chinese people, Bitcointalk is still not very convenient to use. Just like there is Facebook abroad and QQ in China, there is Twitter abroad and Weibo in China, China also needs its own Bitcointalk.

The task was finally accomplished by Chang Qian.

Chang Jia is an outstanding young science fiction writer. In 2006, when he was still a 19-year-old college student, he won the "Galaxy Award", the highest award in the Chinese science fiction community. He was unstoppable and won the award for three consecutive years. At that time, the science fiction community generally believed that Chang Jia was a genius who could surpass Liu Cixin and had a promising future.

As he was obsessed with writing science fiction, Chang Qia searched for emerging technology concepts everywhere, and finally paid attention to Bitcoin in 2010. In Liu Cixin's words later, science fiction is often ahead of technological development, but blockchain and Bitcoin have exceeded the imagination of science fiction writers and have taken the lead in constructing a different world. So when this young science fiction genius encountered the newly born Bitcoin, he quickly fell in love with it.

Chang Qia originally discovered Bitcoin because of his creative needs, but after discovering Bitcoin, he gave up his science fiction creation. In 2011, while promoting Bitcoin, he received a Bitcoin reward from a netizen named "QQAgent". The other party thought his articles were well written and suggested that he apply for an independent domain name and space. The netizen named "QQAgent" was none other than Wu Jihan.

At that time, Chang Jian was still a civil servant in the Nanning Land and Resources Planning Institute. He had always been interested in building websites. He and Wu Jihan pooled a few thousand yuan and rented a server, and Babbitt was born.

In August 2011, Wu Jihan published his first column on Babbitt, describing his experience of using Bitcoin to buy things in China: "I spent 0.1 Bitcoin to upgrade my colleague's cloud service memory from 2GB to 18GB." At that time, people could use Bitcoin to buy goods on Taobao. Wu Jihan himself also used Bitcoin to buy luxury slippers on Taobao, proving that this was "money that could be spent," a new payment method. As for Bitcoin's subsequent regulatory attention, that was two years later.

At the end of 2011, Wu Jihan did another earth-shattering thing. He translated Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin creation paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" into Chinese, and was therefore called the "Bitcoin evangelist." Although at the same time, Li Xiaolai, the early "godfather" of Bitcoin, also translated a version of the Bitcoin white paper, Wu Jihan's translation was the most widely circulated.

02 Pandora’s Box Opened by Laszlo Hanyecz: Pizza Festival and GPU Mining

In Satoshi Nakamoto's original design, Bitcoin was mined by CPU. In other words, every ordinary computer can participate in the Bitcoin mining process. By using this low-threshold participation method, Satoshi Nakamoto believed that a reasonable democracy could be achieved, allowing a wide range of communities to participate in the security maintenance of Bitcoin.

However, Laszlo Hanyecz, an early Bitcoin enthusiast, changed all that.

Laszlo Hanyecz learned about Bitcoin in late 2009. He had a great passion for open source projects and soon became the largest contributor to Bitcoin code. For example, he built and configured the first MacOS Bitcoin Core version and fixed various vulnerabilities for Bitcoin. But he was very humble and said that he only made some "small contributions."

At that time, Bitcoin mining could only be done on the basis of CPU, and no one could find a more efficient way to generate hash hash. Hanyecz inferred that GPU could complete more calculations at a time than CPU, and could calculate block hash faster and better, so it was very suitable for mining.

In 2010, Hanyecz first introduced GPU mining to Bitcoin, which increased its performance tenfold over the CPU hashing speed. In the early days, he only saw GPU mining as an experiment, not a big move. But then Satoshi discovered that the number of Bitcoins that could be mined by a single computer suddenly decreased, and more and more Bitcoins were mined by one person. Finally, Satoshi found Hanyecz and discovered that he was using GPU mining.

At first, Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t like Hanyecz’s new idea. He thought it was cheating to some extent, and told Hanyecz that he had been promoting Bitcoin, such as using Bitcoin to reward community members, so that more people would accept this emerging thing. He also told Hanyecz that if Bitcoin was highly monopolized in the early days, and the monopolists only wanted to hoard but didn’t want to contribute to Bitcoin, then this experiment would fail and the hoarders would not get any benefits.

Hanyecz is a very pure programmer, and he began to feel ashamed of his actions. He then made his GPU mining code public in the community.

In addition, although many people in the Bitcointalk community called Bitcoin "electronic cash" at the time, no one had ever used it to buy anything. In order to truly promote Bitcoin, on May 18, 2010, this core contributor of Bitcoin asked other members on the Bitcointalk forum if anyone was willing to make two large pizzas and send them to his home, or order two for him from a delivery point, and he was willing to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for it. Four days later, he realized this wish. In order to commemorate this pizza worth up to 200 million US dollars, and to commemorate the first real use of Bitcoin, May 18th became the much-talked-about "Bitcoin Pizza Day".

However, even though Hanyecz shared the GPU mining code, Satoshi Nakamoto was still worried about the prospects of Bitcoin. He wrote in an email to Hanyecz: "Any computer can generate free cryptocurrency, which can be a huge attraction for new users, but GPUs will prematurely limit this incentive to companies with high-end GPU hardware, which will result in companies with powerful GPU computing clusters eventually monopolizing all generated cryptocurrencies, which is not my original intention when designing Bitcoin."

After reading Satoshi’s email, Hanyecz said: “I thought to myself, ‘Brother, I’m sorry, I think I screwed up your project.’ Satoshi was worried that some people might be discouraged and frustrated because they couldn’t mine a block with a CPU, so from then on, I never advertised GPU mining again.”

But things went against his wishes. Although Hanyecz tried to call for an end to GPU mining, his invention still spread and opened a Pandora's box on the Internet to increase the hash rate. What he didn't expect was that as the price of Bitcoin continued to rise, GPU mining could no longer meet the needs of community members. Soon after Bitcoin moved from CPU mining to GPU mining, the FPGA mining era began.

03 2012: FriedCat, Wu Jihan and ASIC Miners

A year later, Bitcoin mining has completely gotten rid of the CPU mining that Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned three years ago. Even GPUs are no longer suitable for mining. In 2011, someone released an open source FPGA version of Bitcoin mining machine on Github, and Bitcoin mining has been running towards a higher and higher threshold. Satoshi Nakamoto also disappeared in the summer of that year.

In June 2012, the famous Butterfly Labs announced that it would manufacture ASIC mining machines for Bitcoin, which would have far better performance than FPGA mining machines. This sparked heated discussions on Bitcointalk that year because the mining machine code was not open source; in addition, the high concentration of computing power would impact the entire ecosystem.

At that time, many talented people emerged on the Bitcointalk forum. In order to protect the security of the Bitcoin ecosystem and because of the considerable profits, some Bitcoin enthusiasts also began to conceive of making their own ASIC mining machines. At this time, Roasted Cat and Pumpkin Zhang appeared on the scene.

In July 2012, FriedCat posted a message on the Bitcointalk forum saying that they had the ability to manufacture ASIC mining machines, but they were short of money, so they hoped to raise funds (1 million yuan) through crowdfunding to arrange computing power mining dividends. As an intuitive venture capitalist, Wu Jihan immediately felt that there were unlimited opportunities in this. In August 2012, FriedCat successfully IPOed on the GLBSE exchange, and Wu Jihan became one of its shareholders.

On September 6, 2012, while still a doctoral student at Beihang University, Pumpkin Zhang took the lead in developing the world's first ASIC mining machine, which he named Avalon. The computing speed of this ASIC mining machine far exceeds that of FPGA, and it can generate 357 bitcoins a day. At that time, Pumpkin Zhang chose to sell mining machines on Taobao, and the highest price was 300,000 yuan per unit. The avatar was a still of Cao Cao killing Yang Xiu, and there was a sentence on it: "I will take care of your wife and children, don't worry." This sentence means: "If you buy my mining machine, I will take care of you in your next life, don't worry."

Soon, ASIC mining machines of FC came out. In July 2012, FC raised 1 million yuan; and at the end of the year, the company he founded made 200 million yuan. All the people who invested in FC received a hundredfold return, and Wu Jihan thus earned his first 10 million yuan in his life. He was only 26 years old at the time.

After tasting the sweetness of investing in BBK, Wu Jihan gradually turned his attention from other fields to the Bitcoin mining circle. He participated less and less in the work of Babbitt, and began to build his own mining machines and mines. After investing in BBK, he spent millions to reserve a new "Avalon Miner" from Pumpkin Zhang. Unfortunately, the development of this mining machine was not smooth and was finally delayed.

Wu Jihan saw the risks of investing in mining machines. He knew that if he really believed in Bitcoin mining, it was not enough to just be an investor. It would be better to own his own mining machine production company and keep the technology firmly in his own hands. Technology is the core of the success of mining machines, and he is willing to pay enough money, even equity, for a good technical team.

04 Bitmain, a rising star

In 2013, Wu Jihan finally decided to set up his own mining machine company. That year, he found someone to work with - Zhan Ketuan, an integrated circuit designer from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Wu Jihan did not forget his old friend Chang Qia, and he wanted Chang Qia to start this new company with him. However, Chang Qia was still working in the system and running the Babbitt website at the same time. Compared with Wu Jihan's experience (he invested in the best company in the industry within a year, made 10 million, lost several million, and decided to set up a new mining machine company), Chang Qia's life in the past two years is like an ascetic. He invested all his Bitcoin in 2011 and stood guard at a high position until 2013. In the two years in between, he has been quietly promoting Bitcoin.

In response to Wu Jihan’s invitation, Chang Qia said: “Compared to being a gold digger, I would rather be a water seller on the road to gold mining.”

Even without Chang Jian’s participation, Bitmain still made good progress. Ge Yuesheng, a 20-year-old intern under Wu Jihan who came from a wealthy family, participated in the investment of the new company. As they fully realized the importance of technology in mining machine companies, Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan reached an agreement: if the research and development was successful, the technical team would get 60% of the shares.

Just as Bitmain began to operate, FC reached its peak. With its successfully developed ASIC mining machines, FC's computing power accounted for more than 1/3 of the total network computing power in 2013. In July 2013, FC's mining farm could mine nearly 40,000 bitcoins per month, which once caused unprecedented panic in the community about 51% attacks. It was not until FC finally dispersed its computing power to several different mining pools that the panic in the community gradually subsided.

However, after a flower blooms to its fullest, it withers. The huge success that FC has achieved in a short period of time has laid the hidden dangers for its subsequent rapid decline. These include: 1. Although the price of Bitcoin has fluctuated dramatically in the four years since Bitcoin began to be traded with legal currency, FC has not experienced any setbacks. He is full of the halo that people project on him: a genius in the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China, a doctoral student who dropped out of Yale, a myth of getting rich in one year, the most sentimental entrepreneur in the circle... But in hindsight, Bitcoin is very cruel, and it ruthlessly crushes any genius. 2. Because he has not experienced any setbacks, FC has always maintained the simplicity and nobleness of an intellectual. To some extent, this also means a kind of naivety and fragility, and it cannot withstand the blow of successive failures. 3. Success is the best feed for idealism, allowing FC to continue to ALL IN in it without diversifying investment risks.

In October 2013, Roasted Cat encountered a bottleneck in its R&D and failed to produce the second-generation chip in time; however, Bitmain's Antminer and Avalon miners were gaining momentum. Then, in early 2014, the third-generation chip developed also encountered serious problems, and the finished products were unsalable. For Roasted Cat, which was praised as a "genius" by the outside world, repeated R&D failures were a big blow.

At this time, under the unprecedented rectification efforts of Chinese regulatory authorities and the huge negative impact of Mentougou's bankruptcy, the price of Bitcoin plummeted by 90%. Due to the low price of the currency, and the fact that Bitmain developed a new process mining machine before FC, the FC company that seemed to be in great shape a year ago suddenly failed. In addition, the Huai'an mining farm in Huai'an, where FC invested 70 to 80 million yuan, failed this year. In January 2015, he finally disappeared from the world.

At this time, Bitmain, which survived the crisis, waited for the key figure from the BBK company - Yang Zuoxing. This engineer, who has been in the industry for nearly 20 years, brought the full customization methodology to Bitmain and finally developed the first-generation flagship S9, which helped Bitmain completely monopolize the mining machine industry.

05 Bitcoin community’s debate on capacity expansion

Two flowers bloom, each with its own beauty. While Bitmain gradually gained the leading position in the industry, another thing of profound significance to Wu Jihan and the entire Bitcoin community was also quietly happening, which was the expansion of Bitcoin.

To be fair, it is a very conspiracy theory and irresponsible statement to put the big hat of Bitcoin expansion on Wu Jihan alone. It is a historical issue that has lasted for several years and is also an issue launched by the community. It is definitely not an attempt initiated by a single person to split the Bitcoin community. The problem can be traced back to Satoshi Nakamoto and his "loyal assistant" Hal Finney (the first person to notice the Bitcoin software and help it run normally).

Initially, Satoshi Nakamoto designed the block size to support a maximum capacity of 32M. But in 2009, when Bitcoin was first created, Bitcoin was mined in the form of CPU, and the computing power of the entire network was extremely limited. In addition, there were very few users, and the average size of the packaged blocks at that time was around 1~2K, so 32M seemed too redundant. In addition, the large block size also made the network vulnerable to dust attacks, so Satoshi Nakamoto later set the upper limit of the block size at 1M. However, this does not mean that Satoshi Nakamoto believes that the block size of Bitcoin should be locked within 1M; on the contrary, Satoshi Nakamoto's consideration of the block size is completely adjusted according to actual needs, which is the main source of thought for the expansion faction in the future.

In 2010, when the expansion problem had not yet emerged, Hal Finney, a senior member of the Cypherpunk organization and a cryptographer who helped Satoshi Nakamoto launch the Bitcoin software, proposed the idea of ​​a lightweight and efficient second-layer payment system. He believed that the ultimate fate of Bitcoin was "bank reserves". Through the second-layer payment network, Bitcoin's scalability would be better, and the "service providers" on it could issue cryptocurrencies to exchange with Bitcoin; Bitcoin became the anchor of various "Bitcoin banks". This was the source of the idea of ​​the "Lightning Network" in the future.

In 2013, as prices soared and usage increased significantly, the Bitcoin network began to show signs of congestion, and whether Bitcoin needed to be expanded became a hot topic on Bitcointalk at the time. For a time, the Bitcoin community began to divide into two camps: expansionists and anti-expansionists. The core point of their disagreement was: should the block size of Bitcoin be maintained at 1M, or should its block size be increased to reduce network congestion?

Gavin Anderson, the community leader at the time, was in favor of expansion, while Gregory Maxwell, who later became the leader of Bitcoin core developers, was an opponent. The expansionists believed that the network congestion problem must be solved immediately, otherwise as the number of users further increases, the payment delay problem will be very obvious, and the transaction fees will soar to a terrible level, which is unacceptable for Bitcoin, which is determined to be "electronic cash". Gavin Anderson said: "The increase in Bitcoin transaction fees will keep the poor away from Bitcoin." The opponents of expansion believe that in the long run, the congestion problem can and should be solved through the second-layer network, because expansion can only solve short-term congestion. When more and more people flock to Bitcoin, the already expanded Bitcoin will have to continue to expand, and there is no end to this approach. In addition, the opponents also believe that expansion needs to be carried out in the form of a hard fork, and even if the community agrees to expand, it is divided on whether to expand to 2M, 4M, 8M or even more. Blindly expanding is likely to cause Bitcoin to split into different chains.

Of course, the biggest reason why the opposition refuses to expand is the same as why Satoshi Nakamoto is worried about GPU mining. They believe that Satoshi Nakamoto originally created Bitcoin to provide people with a decentralized and secure trading network, whose security, irreversibility and political independence are its essence. Once a hard fork occurs, the block size will expand from 1M to 2M. Over time, when 2M cannot meet the demand, the block size will continue to expand until ordinary private computers find it difficult to run the entire blockchain, and all computing power will be concentrated on miners. In 2013, the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network was highly concentrated in China, and Baked Cat once accounted for more than 40% of the computing power. In the Bitcoin community, which was full of anarchist tendencies at the time, "China" was often associated with authoritarianism. Letting Chinese miners control the entire chain is even more unacceptable to some Bitcoin core developers.

By 2014, as Ethereum began pre-sale, Bitcoin faced increasing pressure from competing coins. Ethereum's trading experience was better, while Bitcoin stagnated. It was also in February of that year that the famous Mt. Gox exchange declared bankruptcy, claiming that all of its assets (including user assets) of 850,000 bitcoins were stolen, and only 200,000 were recovered in the end. This was a huge blow to early Bitcoin members, because many people stored their bitcoins in Mt. Gox for trading. To some extent, the incident weakened the financial independence of Bitcoin's core developers.

It was also in this year that Blockstream, which had been established for less than a few months, received $20 million in Series A financing. The project was positioned to expand the functions of the Bitcoin protocol layer (side chain). The company has a very luxurious lineup, led by Adam Back, a former HashCash developer; Hammie Hill, an early developer of e-cash electronic cash and founder of the zero-knowledge system, and HashCash and e-cash are both the foundation products of Bitcoin. In addition, Blockstream also has an all-star development team, including the above-mentioned Bitcoin core developers Gregory Maxwell, Jonathan Wilkins, Matt Corallo and Pieter Wuille; Freicoin project leader Jorge Timon and former NASA engineer Mark Friedenbach. (In 2016, Blockstream received another $55 million in Series A financing, with Horizons Ventures participating in the investment.)

In short, Blockstream has gathered the best developers in the Bitcoin community, but these developers are different from the original Bitcoin core developers - they are not like Hal Finney or Hanyecz who volunteer to participate in the open source project, but are directly employed by a company and can get money from it. In addition, Blockstream's business itself revolves around the second-layer network (they build products and try to make profits from them), which began to make some community members question the independence of Bitcoin core developers.

06 "Ao Bencong" disrupts the situation, and the leader Gavin is exiled

By 2015, more and more people were discussing Ethereum. The Bitcoin community felt threatened by this emerging force, and more and more core developers began to propose expansion proposals. This even included Blockstream co-founder Pieter Wuille. On July 21, 2015, Pieter Wuille suggested setting the block limit to the median of the last 11 block sizes, or using the code GetMaxBlockSize(pindexBlock->pprev->GetMedianTimePast()) to control the block size, from January 2017 to July 2063, every 97 days, with an amplitude of no more than 4.4%.

However, once expansion is allowed, the community always has a variety of ideas about expansion. From expansion to 1M, to expansion to 20M, to dynamic expansion like mining difficulty adjustment... Different core developers have proposed different plans, and each has its own reasons. Among them, the proposal of Gavin Anderson, the leader of the core developers at the time, was the most radical. In early 2015, he suggested increasing the block size of Bitcoin from 1M to 20M, but this step seemed too big. In June of the same year, the five major domestic mining pools (Antpool, F2Pool, BTCChina, BW, Huobi) jointly issued a statement opposing the expansion to 20M and supporting the expansion to 8M, but this plan was also opposed by most miners in the community. Therefore, although these forces all supported the expansion, in the end, there were too many differences on how to expand the capacity, and the expansion was not achieved. And Gavin was deprived of the right to merge the code because of the widespread controversy caused.

To be fair, Gavin Anderson has made an indelible contribution to the Bitcoin community. When Satoshi Nakamoto was still in the community, he found that Gavin was not a simple developer or spiritual leader. (The Bitcoin community at that time was not short of dreamers.) What is commendable is that Gavin is willing to discover high-end talents for the Bitcoin community, and is also willing to promote and introduce Bitcoin to newbies who join the community and coordinate community actions. This is why, although Gavin's development level was not the highest in the community at that time, he was still chosen by Satoshi Nakamoto as his successor. And Gavin Anderson did not disappoint Satoshi Nakamoto's expectations. After obtaining the core development rights of the Bitcoin code, he did not dictate, but gradually opened these rights to other developers in the community, who eventually formed the Core organization.

However, when it comes to the issue of capacity expansion, the degree of division in the community has exceeded Gavin's imagination. The early members of Bitcoin were full of Western programmers with crypto-anarchist dreams; however, in 2013, a group of Chinese miners and speculators from the authoritarian Eastern world who became rich overnight flooded into the community. Many of these people were power players in Internet cafes, online novel writers, and even speculators who had been struggling in society after graduating from junior high school. In short, they were so far away from Satoshi Nakamoto's vision that it was difficult for the East and the West to communicate and they had a deep distrust of each other. (The core developers could not tolerate the future of Bitcoin being in the hands of this group of upstarts and questioned the rationality of miners deciding the future of Bitcoin; while the miners did not want to see their interests damaged.) As more and more people poured into the community and their motives became more and more complicated, Gavin's leadership became increasingly incapable.

By 2015, as Blockstream grew in power and the community continued to split, this feeling of powerlessness became more and more intense. However, it was Satoshi Abe who completely deprived Gavin of his leadership position as a core developer of Bitcoin.

"Australian Satoshi" is actually named Craig Wright, an Australian. In December 2015, two investigative articles suddenly appeared on the Wired and Gizmodo websites, both of which pointed out that Craig Wright might be the inventor of Bitcoin. Although a large number of reports later claimed that this was a prank carefully planned by Craig Wright, the report still caused an uproar in the Bitcoin community.

According to Wired magazine, in August 2008, Wright published a post on his blog mentioning his intention to release a "cryptocurrency document" and mentioned "triple-entry accounting" (the title of a 2005 paper by financial cryptographer Ian Grigg that outlined several ideas similar to Bitcoin). Wright published the post several months before Satoshi Nakamoto made the Bitcoin white paper public on the "Cryptography Mailing List" in November 2008.

On January 10, 2009, Wright deleted an archived copy of a blog post that read: "Bitcoin Beta goes live tomorrow. It's decentralized, and we're working hard to get it to actually work." The post was dated January 10, 2009, the day after Bitcoin was officially released on January 9 of that year. However, if Wright, who lives in eastern Australia, posted the post after midnight on the 9th (Australian Eastern Time), the post could still have been posted before Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin (3 p.m. on the 9th, US time).

After the post was deleted, Wright replaced it with some rather obscure text: "Bitcoin - AKA bloody nosey you be…It does always surprise me how at times the best place to hide [is] right in the open." According to Wired magazine, the email was eventually deleted completely by Wright sometime after October 2015.

In the information gradually disclosed later, Wright was also found to have a partner named Dave Kleiman (who died at home in 2013 and many people suspected that he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto). In March 2008, Craig Wright sent an email to Dave Kleiman, which read:

“I need your help editing a paper I’m publishing later this year. I’ve been working on a new type of electronic currency, Bit cash, or Bitcoin, and you’ve always been there for me, Dave, and I’d like you to be a part of this paper.”

In short, all the information points to the fact that Wright and Satoshi Nakamoto have a close relationship. Although many candidates are suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto, or many people jump out and claim that they are Satoshi Nakamoto, none of them can be as similar to Satoshi Nakamoto. Even Gavin Anderson, the designated successor, was blinded.

In 2016, Wright signed digital information with the keys created in the early stages of Bitcoin development, trying to prove to Gavin Anderson that he was Satoshi Nakamoto. Unfortunately, this process was limited to the two of Wright and Gavin Anderson. The details were not made public, and it was impossible for everyone to verify the authenticity of these statements. Although we have no idea what Wright actually allowed Gavin to see, Gavin believed Wright. In addition, Jon Matonis, a famous member of the Bitcoin community, also confirmed that Wright was the real Satoshi Nakamoto. This information was later reported by the BBC, which further triggered restlessness, excitement and anxiety in the entire Bitcoin community.

But no matter what, there is only one way to prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, that is, to show the signature of the founding block. As more and more evidence points to the fact that Wright is the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the community's calls for Wright to publicly sign Wright has become increasingly popular. Under the pressure of public opinion, Wright also tried to prove that he is the creator of Bitcoin by publicly displaying the digital signature of his early Bitcoin development keys matched the blocks dug out by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, when facing the camera, he failed.

This is too bad. Although Wright can gain someone's trust in private, his poor technical level can't convince the community's crypto experts in full view, and in the end he becomes a laughing stock in the Bitcoin world. After this incident, he tried to show others the signature of the founding block, but was slapped in the face one after another. Jimmy Song, a core developer of Bitcoin, even wrote a special article to expose his tricks, which made the already confusing event more like a farce.

In the whole farce, the one who suffered the most was Gavin Anderson, the leader of the Bitcoin developer at that time. Although he made a lot of contributions to the Bitcoin community, the core developers were extremely disappointed with him because of misunderstanding Satoshi Nakamoto. Some developers even believed that Gavin himself might also be involved in the scandal. As the community became more and more divided, if Satoshi Nakamoto returned and stood on Gavin's side, the situation might turn around, so Gavin had a motivation to do so. However, more developers chose to believe that Gavin was also deceived, because in this scam, not only Gavin was deceived, but many early members also fell into the trap.

However, Gavin's reputation has been hit hard. In May 2016, Gavin issued a statement through a blog post saying that he admitted that "Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto" is wrong. Some people in the community believe that it is time for the confused Gavin to give up the virtuous.

It was in this year that Core revoked Gavin Andresen's code modification rights. The reason they gave was: If Gavin Andresen handed over the code modification rights of Bitcoin to Craig Steven Wright and found out later that he was not Satoshi Nakamoto, then Bitcoin would be controlled by a liar.

Things have developed to this point, and the distribution of power between the expansionists and the opposition among developers has begun to become unbalanced. This is exactly the prelude to Wu Jihan's next appearance.

07 The expansionist team against Core

After losing Gavin, the leader, due to the lack of reconciliators, the confrontation between the expanding faction and the opposition not only did not ease, but was even more divided. For a time, conspiracy theories and political factional theories broke out in the community. People in both camps accused the other party of killing Bitcoin.

The exiled Gavin became one of the targets of the opposition's fierce criticism of the expansionist group. For example, because he spent more time on Bitcoin promotion, Gavin spent less and less time on development since 2014, and then he did not touch the code. Core was deeply dissatisfied with this and also criticized Gavin's code for being "bad and unreadable" and worked hard to weaken Gavin's status and contribution in the entire community.

The expansionist criticized the Core members represented by Blockstream for losing their development independence and fairness, and there is a danger of turning the entire bottom layer of Bitcoin into a vassal of the second-layer network. Once the Lightning Network is really built, most transactions will occur on the second-layer network, and the second-layer network will eventually become an absolute centralization, with the central node monopolizing the transaction channel. At that time, the underlying network will become a channel for settlement of the central node of the second-layer network, and most people will not use the underlying network in their entire lives. The expansionist believes that Core's approach is greatly contrary to the original intention of Satoshi Nakamoto's establishment of Bitcoin.

Of course, the debate between the expansionists and the opposition at the developer level is just a dispute over ideas, but the fundamental choice of the basic route involves the specific interests of all parties in the community. If most transactions ultimately go to the second-tier network, it will inevitably weaken the interests of the underlying network ecosystem. The direct damage will be miners and mining machine manufacturers who maintain the security of the underlying network; and its biggest beneficiary is the nodes that provide liquidity on the second-tier network. Finally, this debate spread from a small scale to the participants in the entire ecosystem, which seems extremely complicated.

After Gavin was expelled from the core Bitcoin developer community, the expansionists urgently needed to gather under a new leader. At this time, there were several people who stood up: Wu Jihan, Roger Ver, known as "Bitcoin Jesus", Satoshi Ao, and the developer organization BU. Among them, Wu Jihan has the largest power, because Bitmain once occupied nearly 50% of the entire Bitcoin network computing power, which has great impact on the entire ecosystem.

Roger Ver, an early member of the Bitcoin community, heard about Bitcoin in 2010. In 2011, he began to delve into Bitcoin, and when he understood what it was like to come to Bitcoin, the economic liberalist felt deeply that he had found the most perfect thing in his life, thinking that it even exceeded the Internet. He even fell ill and was hospitalized due to excessive excitement.

From then on, he was like a lunatic, selling Bitcoin to everyone. In 2011, Bitcoin rose from $1 to $35, but fell from $35 to a minimum of $2 after the stolen Mentougou. Some people began to think that this thing was just a scam, but Roger Ver still spared no effort to promote it. Not only did he install a Bitcoin billboard next to the Lawrence Expressway in Silicon Valley at his own expense, he also went to the radio station to advertise Bitcoin many times, and finally won the reputation of "Bitcoin Jesus".

As an early preacher, Roger Ver has a wide influence in the Bitcoin community. As for Satoshi, although his reputation was bankrupt by the core developers, he gained some trust in the community with the operation and support of Calvin Ayre, the funder behind him. These people believe that there must be some inconvenient difficulties in the reason why Wright cannot present its founding block signature in public, such as, as Wright said, "I will be in danger once it is announced." They believe that Wright is undoubtedly the real Satoshi Nakamoto, and Bitcoin has been stolen by Cores.

With developers, a name called Bitcoin Unlimited is rising. As an alternative to Bitcoin users, Bitcoin Unlimited has established itself as a competitive alternative to Bitcoin Core, hoping to let the market determine the ideal block size rather than make the topic a tool for a few people in the community to manipulate faction and political struggles.

It seems that the group against Core has formed, and the power of the expansionist faction cannot be underestimated. In fact, this group is more like a group formed by the existence of the enemy. The entire community only has the same views on "big blocks", but there are differences on how to practice "big blocks" and "big blocks". This naturally leaves hidden dangers for the subsequent development of BCH.

However, when facing Core, the common enemy, the expansionists still exerted amazing combat power. In public, Wu Jihan even swears, and the Chinese curse of "Fuck your mother if you want fuck" impressed the core developers. His hot temper and nearly 50% of the computing power in his hand made Wu Jihan the "Jihad" (one word difference from Jihan, meaning "terrorist") in the eyes of the expansionists.

08 Core's "betrayal" and Wu Jihan's hard fork

Before Bitcoin hard fork, there were two agreements close to the "consensus" in the community, but they were torn up twice.

On January 12, 2016, a Bitcoin developer named Jonathan Toomim proposed to continue Satoshi Nakamoto's idea, expand the block size to 2MB based on the BIP109 protocol, and fork out Bitcoin Classic. The proposal was supported by Gavin Anderson (who was also a leader of the community at the time). However, if the plan is really activated, it requires 75% of the computing power of the entire network.

Bitcoin Classic was quickly promoted as soon as it was proposed, which triggered the community's panic about Bitcoin split. On January 23, Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Core and Chinese miners held a Miami Bitcoin roundtable at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. This was a hasty meeting and no agreement was reached. However, in order to prevent community division, Chinese miners quickly organized a coordination meeting on the expansion of capacity based on the Miami meeting. After the meeting, the "1992 Consensus" was unilaterally reached, that is, 2M expansion was carried out with 90% of the computing power of the entire network. The threshold for 90% of the computing power is very strict, and it can be basically considered that miners are opposing the Bitcoin Classic plan. (It seems that this is too joking in the future.)

However, Bitcoin Classic ignored Core and miners' opinions and was officially released in early February 2016. Although it was a hasty release, it also received more than half of the computing power support of the entire network. Many exchanges including Coinbase, OKCoin, Bitstamp, etc. also supported the plan.

Then at the end of February, Core and miners held a capacity expansion meeting in Hong Kong. The meeting lasted from the 20th to 3:30 am on the 21st. The two sides reached an agreement, known as the "Bitcoin Roundtable Meeting on Capacity Expansion", also known as the "Hong Kong Consensus". The biggest achievement of the agreement is that Core agreed to include the hard fork to 2M into the core framework; in exchange, Chinese miners also agreed to only run the Bitcoin program developed by Core, and firmly draw a clear line with Bitcoin Classic.

People at that time thought it was a solidarity conference. Unexpectedly, shortly after Core's Hong Kong peace talks were returned, Core refused to implement the Hong Kong consensus because other members of the development team were dissatisfied with the agreement. Since this meeting, Core lost the trust of Chinese miners.

In April 2017, Bitcoin expansion faces a deadlock because Core, as a whole, refused to recognize the promises signed by the representatives of the Hong Kong consensus. Barry Silbert, a well-known investor of Bitcoin and founder of Digital Currency Group, hopes to resolve the deadlock. Throughout April, he had a one-on-one connection with representatives of major companies and developers in the industry. After great efforts, he initially softened the positions of all parties. Blockstream CEO Adam Back even promised Barry to go to New York to attend face-to-face consultations in May.

However, according to Wu Jihan, "Before Adam left, he was severely stopped by another important partner within Blockstream. On the eve of the talks in New York, Adam temporarily announced that he would refuse to attend the meeting. At the same time, Blockstream sent a lower-level Miao Yongquan to attend the meeting, but was eventually rejected by the meeting host Barry."

Core said that they sent representatives to attend, but the representatives were eventually intercepted outside the venue. In the absence of Core developers, the representatives present reached a consensus and prepared to implement the SegWit+2M binding expansion plan.

As things have developed here, almost everyone thinks that the expansion problem can be resolved peacefully. However, there are several variables implicitly in this: first, Core has not given up on the small block route, they are still proposing different protocols (even laying traps) and trying to interfere with the implementation of the New York consensus; secondly, because Bitmain monopolizes the mining circle industry and has a domineering and strong style, there are already people in the mining circle dissatisfied with it, so Chinese miners are not a monolithic, and some mining pools are willing to stand on the side of Core; thirdly, Segwit involves a patent issue of Bitmain. After the introduction of Segwit, Bitmain's mining machines may not be able to gain the same advantages as before, so Bitmain has a motive to not want to introduce Segwit; finally, whether it is large blockists or small blockists, their differences are obvious enough, and there is a lack of trust, and the actual basis of hard fork already exists.

Due to various reasons, Bitcoin still went towards a hard fork on August 1, 2017, and BCH was officially forked on the 478,558 block of Bitcoin. The party that took the initiative to initiate the hard fork was ViaBTC, a mining pool invested by Bitmain.

Although Wu Jihan later claimed that BCH was born under the prospect of foreseeing that the New York consensus would inevitably be betrayed by small blockists who were untrustworthy, BCH was introduced before the New York consensus was implemented. In the eyes of many elderly people involved in the incident that year, Core had done a lot of damage to the implementation of the New York consensus, but in fact it was Wu Jihan himself who was the first to betray the New York consensus. At that time, he attended the New York consensus meeting as a representative of Chinese miners. Afterwards, Chinese miners held a corresponding meeting in Chengdu for this matter, and he attended both meetings. But Wu Jihan not only did not execute the results of the meeting, but instead forked Bitcoin. What is even more unacceptable is that the hard fork version does not come with Segwit, which is beneficial to Bitmain's own mining machines.

Throughout history, a great change requires not only courage, but also great strategic determination and patience. This is especially true if it is launched in a community with a large number of forces. The ultimate victory is not the rash adventurers, but mature politicians. Several failed expansion events of Bitcoin have proved this. ——Gavin Anderson proposed to directly expand Bitcoin to 20M in 2015. Bitcoin Classic was launched directly in 2016 without broad consent. However, the time is not ripe. Once the attack cannot be successful, it will be difficult to stop and quickly slide to failure.

Wu Jihan's camp was too risky. As he said, the BCH plan was defensive at the beginning, to ensure that if the UASF that Core was engaged in was activated, there was still a backup of the entire Bitcoin transaction history and would not be completely erased. But this plan eventually became enterprising and directly forked Bitcoin. In this way, the nature of the matter completely changed, and the community's spearhead quickly changed from targeting Core to targeting Bitmain, making Wu Jihan the target of public criticism.

Wu Jihan has tried to let BCH crush BTC, but his method is too rough. Perhaps money and power have made him blinded. He contacted the power that can be connected in the mining and capital circles, trying to make BCH surpass BTC in terms of computing power and price. In addition, he also contacted his old friends in the media industry extensively, trying to make them write a strong mark for BCH.

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This hasty "uprising" not only did not shake Core's position in the Bitcoin community, but instead gave the Bitcoin expansionist a heavy blow. After Core's opponents all left BCH, the expansionist could no longer cause storms in the Bitcoin community, and almost all discussions about expansion disappeared.

09 "Australia" air strike: BCH community splits again

As mentioned earlier, the BCH community at the beginning gathered a group of expansionists, with the most important figures and organizations in it including Wu Jihan, Roger Ver, Satoshi O, BU, etc. When they were fighting against Core, they were able to gather into a faction; however, when they really separated from Core, the internal contradictions had just begun to emerge.

First of all, even large blockists are divided into several factions. In terms of expansion, some support unlimited expansion; some support gradually expanding according to actual needs. As for what the actual needs are, this is different from one's own opinion. On the development route of BCH, some see ETH at its peak, and believe that BCH should develop like ETH, establish smart contracts, and also run applications; some believe that BCH should completely return to the Satoshi era, remove those unnecessary functions, and be a currency with peace of mind.

As a new thing that has just emerged from BTC, what should the community do? Who should BCH become after losing its title?

At the beginning, Wu Jihan often expressed his opinions in the group and responded to the community's views. After the failure to compete for BTC status, Wu Jihan set the tone for the community: Just like the American colony that left the United Kingdom, BCH has left the parent body of BTC. What welcoming BCH should be a broader world, rather than fantasizing about returning to that cramped parent body.

In the BCH community, Bitmain is undoubtedly the one who has made the most. They not only spent millions of dollars to fund the development team, but also exchanged tens of thousands of Bitcoin for BCH. In addition, BCH conferences were held several times, and all the funds were borne by Bitmain itself. However, this also caused dissatisfaction in the community. Some people accused Wu Jihan: "Diligence, turning BCH into Bitmain's corporate currency." Some people also thought that he was not well managed: "I let down my trust in you, and I exchanged Bitcoin for BCH for real money and fell into this miserable form."

This is probably something Wu Jihan didn't expect.

In essence, Wu Jihan is a liberal, and controlling the BCH community has no meaning to him. In his opinion, BCH is obviously not a Bitmain currency, nor is it the coin issued by himself, and the community should not have only one voice. Therefore, half a year after the birth of BCH, Wu Jihan began to gradually fade out of the BCH's public opinion circle and try to express opinions in the community as little as possible. At this time, the influence of Roger Ver and Satoshi Ao began to highlight - especially Satoshi Ao.

Although he was unable to show the signature of the Creation block, Satoshi O still firmly called himself Satoshi Nakamoto. Unlike those who issued altcoins, Satoshi O publicly stated that other chains except Bitcoin would die (including Ethereum created by Vitalik, which has a good relationship with BCH), and that blockchain is a complete pseudo-concept. These controversial remarks have sparked splashes in the new BCH community. Some people think that Satoshi O is a complete liar and should be cut off from him; others seem to have found a life mentor. What is incredible is that there are many intellectual groups and elites among Satoshi O’s believers.

Among the various remarks made by Satoshi Australia, absolute "big blockism" can attract believers the most. He claimed that BCH should return to the classics, which simply means to cancel the upper limit of BCH expansion and allow BCH to infinitely return to the initial description of Bitcoin in Nakamoto's white paper. This concept is simple and crude, which fits the view of extreme "big blockists", and eventually successfully washed some of the believers of BCH into his believers.

Speaking of these "big blockists" in China, they were originally grown up by the propaganda of Wu Jihan and others. Liu Aihua, the founder of Bidsin, is one of them. (As early as 2014, Bitmain invested Bidsin; during the BTC hard fork, Bidsin also made a lot of publicity for BCH.) However, under the encouragement of Satoshi Ao, the most determined Bidsinists had more radical ideas. They gradually recognized Satoshi Ao's philosophy, which laid the foundation for him to fork BCH and establish BSV.

Wu Jihan knows very well what Satoshi is in his heart. If BCH really "returns to classics", then such a large group of people will "work" for Satoshi Ao. First of all, Satoshi Ao firmly calls himself Satoshi Nakamoto. Once he returns to classics instead of exploring outside, the development of the entire chain will be defined by Satoshi Ao who can explain classics; in addition, everyone is very clear that Satoshi Nakamoto's code level is not high, and simply returning to Satoshi Nakamoto's code is meaningless. After returning to classics, the beneficiaries will only be nChain (the company behind Satoshi Ao) who has applied for a crypto patent. He sees what Satoshi Ao has done, and at the same time, he also understands that shortly after he has separated from the BTC community, the emerging BCH community is also facing the risk of division.

Finally, in mid-August 2018, CoinGeek, the largest mining pool of BCH, and nChain, issued a joint statement announcing that they supported the new version of Bitcoin SV, the client of the Bitcoin Cash Network, and stated that they would restore Bitcoin’s original protocol in the form of BCH. The relevant code and technical routes of this new client are incompatible with the BCH protocol at that time. This statement directly sounded the clarion call for the BCH hard fork.

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Since there are differences and the contradictions are irreconcilable, there is no need to just go through it. This seems to be Wu Jihan’s own characteristic. This time, Satoshi Ao separated nearly one-third of the people in the BCH community and leveraged a BSV community with extremely low leverage, and owned a top ten cryptocurrency in the market value, thus becoming one of the biggest winners in the continuous forks. What is left for Wu Jihan is endless reflection.

10 Disagreements with Zhan Ketuan

There are two paths throughout Wu Jihan's cryptocurrency career, one is BCH and the other is Bitmain. After the failure of BCH, Wu Jihan's position Bitmain also began to encounter a crisis. All this has to start with his partner Zhan Ketuan.

Everyone has their own dream, and so does Zhan Ketuan.

As an integrated circuit designer, Zhan Ketuan’s dream is to enter AI and build a company like Cambrian. He does not have as deep belief and bonds as Wu Jihan. Entering this industry was more like a coincidence. If he could not make money, he would decisively switch the track; and if he made a lot of money in this industry, he would realize his dream as soon as possible - an "AI dream".

In 2017, while Wu Jihan bet on BCH with the money earned by Bitmain to support his Bitcoin dream, Zhan Ketuan did not save money for the company. At the end of that year, Bitmain announced the acquisition of Beijing Luobu Technology Co., Ltd. According to insiders in Bitmain, the reason for acquiring this company was because of Zhan Ketuan's obsession with AI. There was also a hint of embarrassment behind this, that is, despite spending a lot of money, Zhan Ketuan's AI team was unable to make good AI products at the time. Compared with its own research and development, for Bitmain, which had revenue of over US$2.7 billion and net profit of US$1.18 billion in 2017, direct acquisition can produce results faster.

A simple acquisition cannot meet Zhan Ketuan's expectations for Bitmain's future. In his opinion, the price of Bitcoin is extremely volatile and the entire industry is very risky. To make Bitmain truly develop steadily, it depends on AI. He proposed that Bitmain should achieve two legs: one is a mining machine and the other is AI. Of course, this vision is more like a mixture and compromise between Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan's dreams. The former idea is Wu Jihan's, and the latter is Zhan Ketuan's real idea. If Bitmain can really become Cambrian, Zhan Ketuan may even agree to close the mining machine department.

In order to accelerate Bitmain's transformation, Zhan Ketuan frantically expanded his AI R&D team. He offered extremely high salaries, poaching people from companies such as Huawei, and once offered high salaries such as an annual salary of 3 million. In terms of number of people, in mid-2017, Bitmain's total employees were no more than three or five hundred, and by August 2018, it rose to more than 3,000. In this year, Bitmain used AI chips as a new business that was fully developed. Among these new employees, most of them were technical personnel related to AI chip research and development.

Gradually, the mining machine department became a petri dish, which provided continuous money for the dreams of the two bosses of the company. One was to invest this money in BCH, and the other was to use this money to invest it in the AI ​​career. However, the petri dish itself lacked nutrients.

Taking Xindong Technology as an example, the company was originally a traditional IC designer, but later entered the digital currency mining machine industry. While developing mining machines, they also continued to have traditional businesses, such as AI chip design. However, their talent switch is relatively flexible, and R&D talents can flow freely in the mining machine department and traditional chip R&D department. However, in the rapidly expanding Bitmain, talents from the mining machine department and AI department were unable to flow from 2017 to 2018. The company also gave a large amount of funds to the AI ​​department, which means that the most expensive talents are in the AI ​​department. In terms of funding arrangements, this laid the foreshadowing for the poor research and development of mining machine chips in Bitmain later and was once crushed by Shenma mining machines.

There is a popular saying: "Be rich and willful." After earning tens of billions of yuan, Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan were both willful and very expensive. However, all willfulness ended in the bear market.

11 Failure of filming and crazy capital consumption

If you want to evaluate Bitmain for a peak period, it can only be 2017. It was a thorough seller's market. At that time, Bitmain's mining machine sales were just like real estate sales in the crazy real estate market. Even if you are extremely arrogant to customers, customers would catch up with them to order mining machines from thousands of miles away. It is a very awesome to know a sales friend in Bitmain; or in other words, there is no such thing as sales at all.

This is very similar to the roast cat company back then. 2013 was the peak of roast cats, the peak of other people's personality, the peak of money, the peak of reputation, and even the peak of power in the circle. However, 2013 also became the beginning of the rapid decline of roast cats. The successive failures of stripping caused heavy losses to roast cats and indirectly caused the rise of competitors. It was in this 2017 that Bitmain also began to repeat the nightmare of roast cats.

From 2017 to 2018, Bitmain had at least four failed mining machine chips, including 16nm, 12nm and 10nm chips, of which 16nm chips failed twice, which caused Bitmain to lose at least 6 billion to 8 billion yuan. It would be fine if this money was burned in time; but worse, Bitmain missed the opportunity to launch the latest mining machine. This ultimately gave Yang Zuoxing, a core R&D worker who left Bitmain, an unprecedented opportunity, allowing him to successfully lead Bitmain to rise from the world.

In August 2018, Bitwei launched the 16nm Bitcoin mining machine M10. Under the same power consumption, the computing power of this mining machine far exceeds that of Bitmain's ace mining machine S9 (also also a 16nm chip mining machine). This caused a huge response in the circle and also caused a huge tear in Bitmain.

At this time, the real ace product that Bitmain could play was the Ant S9. According to Yang Zuoxing, this king-level mining machine chip was designed by him at the end of 2015. In other words, since Yang Zuoxing left Bitmain, the so-called mining machine giant has not taken a step further in R&D. Although Bitmain made great profits in 2017, after its core R&D personnel left, its profit sustainability was suspected in the circle.

On the other hand, it was not that Bitmain had thought of retaining Yang Zuoxing. At the end of 2015, Yang Zuoxing completed the design of the S9, and the price of Bitcoin also rose back to its original high. So Yang Zuoxing rekindled his interest in the industry and considered whether to join Bitmain. From December 2015 to May 2016, he had a total of 6 months of talks with Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan, and finally ended up in an unhappy manner.

The reason for the unhappy parting is very simple: the money is not in place.

Bitmain’s two king-level products, S7 and S9, are all embodied in Yang Zuoxing’s contribution. When Yang Zuoxing helped Bitmain design chips in early 2015, its valuation was only a few hundred million yuan; but by the end of 2015, Bitmain’s valuation soared to 10 billion yuan. Although he made a lot of contributions, although Wu Jihan thought he could give Yang Zuoxing 2% of the shares, Zhan Ketuan was only willing to give him 0.5% of the shares. Yang Zuoxing finally felt worthless and finally left in 2016.

According to the initial agreement between Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan, the 60% stake in name actually belongs to the technical team. A good technical team leader is willing to provide rich material rewards to a good technical team, let alone the core designer of the technical team; however, Zhan Ketuan did not do so. He gave 1.5% less shares, and according to Bitmain's valuation at that time, this was 150 million. After missing Yang Zuoxing, he lost more than 150 million. The losses caused to the entire company by successive failures alone exceeded 6 billion, and the rising Bitmain's market share was eroded by Bitmain's market share, and the losses were immeasurable.

This is a major strategic mistake. Perhaps, if the person Wu Jihan met in 2013 was Yang Zuoxing, a person worthy of giving 60% of the shares, things would be completely different; but fate made Wu Jihan meet Zhan Ketuan, and Yang Zuoxing met roasted cat.

And in August 2018, what was Wu Jihan facing? It was the BCH hard fork statement of the Australian Satoshi camp, and it was the betrayal and departure of a group of extreme "big blockists" allies. In order to support BCH, Bitmain exchanged 50,000 BTC for 1 million BCH in 2017, and once allocated a lot of computing power on BCH. However, BCH not only did not succeed, but also faced the danger of continuing to split. In the view of Zhan Ketuan, even in the view of some of Wu Jihan's old subordinates, Wu Jihan's decisions on BCH were a complete strategic mistake of the company. It not only made Bitmain bear the charge of destroying the industry ecology, but also caused billions of losses to Bitmain.

It was also in August 2018 that Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan discovered that although the company had made tens of billions before, there was not much money left after a series of strategic mistakes between the two (what was done for their dreams). This is the direct reason for the two's quarrel. Another more profound and urgent thing is: the company has expanded to 3,000 people, and with the money in the company's account, it cannot support such a large team to survive forever, and the bull market is far away. What should we do?

Faced with the crisis, the two founders of Bitmain (two CEOs) began to criticize each other for a protracted long time, and in the most serious cases, they called each other "imaginary". Wu Jihan believes that under the harsh market conditions, the AI ​​departments that cannot be directly profitable and are very expensive should be decisively cut off; while Zhan Ketuan took Wu Jihan's investment department and Copernicus team to attack. Both sides used the other's mistakes as weapons to attack, and inserted their knives into the other's sphere of influence. For a time, the internal atmosphere of Bitmain was particularly depressing.

12 Struggle and Farewell

Wu Jihan is not the kind of person who likes power and tricks by nature. He loves freedom. If the conditions allow a company with 3,000 people to operate in a flat manner, he will never adopt a bureaucratic system. Even in 2017 and 2018, when Bitmain was in power, Wu Jihan often wore simple clothes. He often used a T-shirt in summer, and often spent the same T-shirt for several days, without spending a lot of money after getting rich. And if it was Zhan Ketuan's turn to attend the meeting, he often wore a famous watch and a suit.

Although it is not about the details, Wu Jihan has a halo. In Bitmain, he has a group of natural fans and "old ministers", including Ge Yuesheng, who first invested in a company with him, Yu Wei, the number one person in China's mining industry, and "Li Mine", a famous mine in the mining industry. These people have followed him in 2013 and 2014 and witnessed the growth of Bitmain.

而在吸引众人的簇拥面前，詹克团相差甚远。他虽是技术出身，却未能留下比他能力更强的设计师；至于对比特币的理解、对金融市场的洞见以及对大势的把握，则远不如吴忌寒。因此，虽然他和吴忌寒一样缺乏管理大型公司的经验，但他在管理上犯下的错误要更加幼稚。这不仅体现在他为不赚钱的AI部门开高薪上，还体现在一些其他的细节上。例如，他曾在和吴忌寒吵完架后，在公司的大群里发当年和吴忌寒一起的照片，感慨当年。这让公司上下的人完全摸不着头脑，哭笑不得。

无论如何，两位创始人在管理上的稚嫩，让这个3000人的大公司长时间以「小作坊」的形式运作着，臃肿而缺乏效率。而其战略上的频频失误，又让他们「凭运气赚来的钱，又凭实力亏了出去。」随着资金的紧缺，必须要动手削减公司规模了。然而，究竟该如何削减呢？

2018年12月24日前后，公司的两位创始人终于吵出了一个结果。

比特大陆开启了前所未有的裁员潮。在这次裁员中，矿机业务裁员比例为百分之三四十，AI业务裁员比例则达到百分之五十（终端芯片是重点），BCH的开发团队哥白尼被整个裁撤掉。在此之后，比特大陆的员工总数从3000多人缩减至1000多人，裁撤幅度之大令人咋舌，因而也被称为「血色圣诞节」。

2018年的冬天注定令吴忌寒难忘。这年冬天，他不仅眼睁睁看着BCH社区被澳本聪切走了三分之一，饱受着失败的打击，还看着一年之中成长起来的比特大陆迅速萎缩下去。比特币价格继续下坠，公司的矿机卖得极差。虽然每次开抢都「售罄」，但那只不过是一种营销策略，中间的冷暖滋味只有自己才知道。

人的精力和感情都有限。吴忌寒需要休息，何况这位自由主义的信奉者，始终相信「道不同不相为谋」，也不愿和任何人做「捆绑夫妻」。他可以因为观念不同，在比特币社区中发动硬分叉；也因为观念不同，「欢送」澳本聪离开；那么，当他做出决定自己不能同詹克团一起消耗下去时，这一切也都可以理解了。

在比特大陆的2018年年会上，詹克团、吴忌寒和王海超三个人一起发表了讲话。内部人士都知道这并不是一场简单的年会。王海超上台，暗示了他日后在公司的地位；而吴忌寒则已萌生去意。和往年的年会的精神气不同，吴忌寒留了一脸胡子，略显疲惫，只讲了寥寥几句便下场。

下场后是一场接一场的酒。在和詹克团吵了半年后，在他们正式告别的最后时刻，两位创始人都流下了眼泪。他们的拥抱是真诚的，他们的酒是真诚的，他们的眼泪也是真诚的。2018年过得不容易，这一年放在任何一个人身上，都会觉得像过了十年。无论是行业、人生还是朋友，都已经是沧海桑田、天翻地覆了。

年会在酒中结束，但人们还舍不得离场。仰慕吴忌寒的员工们纷纷来找他合影，那晚他们拍了很多照片。没人知道明天会怎样，他们将往哪里去。

13 重起炉灶

2019年3月，比特大陆发布内部信，由王海超担任公司CEO，詹克团继续担任公司董事长，吴忌寒继续担任公司董事，公司战略方向仍由两位创始人把控。但其实大家都知道，吴忌寒已经另起炉灶。

虽然哥白尼团队被整个裁撤，但吴忌寒并没有放弃在区块链领域探索的决心。此外，在和詹克团分家后，他不用再去迁就詹克团「走技术范」的想法，反而开始肆意发挥自己的金融专长。吴忌寒很早就知道，交易所和矿商是两个能够最大捕获加密货币价值的行业赛道。随着比特币的矿越挖越少，流通的比特币越来越多，交易所的地位将越发重要。再加上矿工手中有币，是天然的交易群体，布局「加密金融」的想法就这么诞生了。

2019年3月初，火星财经在吴忌寒的老家重庆举办了「POW'ER中国区块链贡献者年度峰会」，吴忌寒登台演讲，2018年底的疲惫与沧桑一扫而光。3月底，币印又在成都举办了「新时代矿业峰会」。吴忌寒周旋于重庆和成都之间，结交资源，为他接下来的「加密金融」项目做准备。到了7月，他的新公司Matrixport正式开启运营。

而此时的比特大陆却开始在矿机市场上频频失利，市场份额下降到了50%以下。在吴忌寒「出走」之后，詹克团执迷的AI梦没有实现，但「华为系」却入侵了比特大陆的矿机定价团队。由于外行指导内行，新的定价团队开始将「华为」手机的定价逻辑套用在了矿机上，把矿机当作手机来卖，认为蚂蚁矿机应当像华为手机那样享有高溢价。如此一来，低性价比的新款矿机自然没有受到市场欢迎。

除了内部管理一团糟外，比特大陆在外部也经受着新兴矿商崛起的巨大考验。2018年12月，比特币跌到了3155美元。接下来的两个月，比特币价格都维持在此价格之上。这时，见识过2015年比特币价格触底的杨作兴决定豪赌一把，开始带领比特微大量生产矿机。这次他终于赌对了。到2019年6月，比特币价格涨到了近1.4万美元，比特微的大算力机器受到市场追捧，神马矿机现货全部卖出，期货订单络绎不绝。2019年全年，比特微2019年向市场出售矿机60万台，盈利达数十亿元人民币，其市场份额一度占到了全网的40%。

对此，詹克团的反击是无力的。

詹克团不是没有用心治理公司，为比特大陆找出路。他是一个异常勤奋的人，眼光也非常高远。这年，他主导了比特大陆在其老家福州的城市大脑项目。然而这个步子似乎跨得太大了。据比特大陆内部人士反映，这类项目本该是华为这样体量的集成商才有能力承接，无论是从经验积累上还是从员工规模上，比特大陆做这件事都不甚合适。然而，詹克团一心想把比特大陆打造成「小华为」，执意将大笔钱投向这个项目。最终，直到詹克团被「政变」，这件事都未能成功。

不过，比特大陆并不仅仅是詹克团和吴忌寒的，它背后还站着数十亿元的投资方，以及持股近20%的员工。眼看比特大陆在走下坡路，投资人和公司高管对此深感担忧。然而，詹克团不仅不调整公司的发展思路，还在喝醉酒后对比特大陆高管说：「我已经实现财务自由，已经上岸了。」言下之意，比特大陆未来的发展以及能否上市，对他来讲都是身外之事。

这样的态度，让公司高管和投资人感到非常失望，他们认为在詹克团身上已经看不到希望，最后站到了吴忌寒这边。

14 政变归来

政变向来是一件难度极高的事，一般人操作不了。做的不好，就会搞成李国庆那样，又是上媒体「摔杯」，又是带四条大汉进公司「抢章」，搞得拖泥带水，闹得天翻地覆，最后只得到一个旁人看热闹的笑话。最糟糕的是，整个公司人仰马翻，投资人信心全无，在位者高度警惕，从此再难返回公司。

吴忌寒不是这种人。

作为深谙人性的币圈教父，李笑来评价人总是有一套。他曾经评价烤猫说「脑瓜儿好使」，而评价吴忌寒的时候则称之为「区块链行业中带伤带血的战士」，是自己打不过的对手。「带血的战士」，是一个非常恰当的评价。

同为因硬分叉而失意的一代领袖加文·安德森，背负着社区的指责和骂名，自2017年起逐渐隐退江湖；同为矿难和公司止步不前的一代天才烤猫，顶不住频频失败的压力，自2015年起消失无踪。而吴忌寒在哪儿？他走了吗？

No.

吴忌寒的政变是突如其来的。

2019年10月，在投资人和公司员工的支持下，吴忌寒向詹克团发动了「政变」。10月28日，比特大陆的北京运营主体北京比特大陆科技有限公司（“北京比特”）法定代表人、执行董事均由詹克团变更为吴忌寒。10月29日，吴忌寒发布内部信，宣布解除詹克团在比特大陆的一切职务。「我必须回来拯救这家公司，在悬崖边上把公司拉住。」在2019年10月29日回归当天召开的全员大会上，吴忌寒情绪激动地说。

而这时，詹克团还在深圳出差，看到消息的时候整个人都是懵的。

11月2日，吴忌寒再发第三封邮件，宣布全员加薪。为绝后患，他迅速召开了股东大会，废除了詹克团的特殊投票权。此前，詹克团和吴忌寒均持有比特大陆开曼公司B类股票，其他股东持A类股票。B类股票拥有1:10的投票权。在废除詹特殊投票权后，吴忌寒阵营终于占据超过50%的投票权，从此才真正坐稳公司。

这时，詹克团终于返回北京，称将「拿起法律武器」捍卫比特大陆。随后，他聘请了汉坤律师事务所，并开启了漫长的诉讼之路。

2019年12月9号，詹克团召开股东大会，要求罢免现有董事，选举他为唯一董事，但是因丧失多数投票权遭到否决。在被废除特殊投票权后，詹克团于12月在开曼提起诉讼，要求法院认定这项决议无效，目前双方仍在诉讼中。

吴忌寒重新回到了比特大陆。这时，迎接他的是满怀期望的员工、高管和投资人，然而他已经不再是曾经那个充满理想主义的少年了。一个「带血的战士」，不可能让所有人都满意。在丢掉幻想后，他的动作更加锋利，开启了疯狂的大裁员。

裁员的依据是比特币将在2020年迎来减半，矿机业务将受到冲击。加上吴忌寒并没有看到「新钱」涌入比特币，基于宏观环境恶化的现状，他对2020年的行情乐观不起来，因而选择了保主营业务。而非主营业务的AI部门，则成为了比特大陆的裁撤重点。（这一度被认为是在清洗詹克团派系业务。）

在这次疯狂大裁员中，比特大陆的人数从1300多人砍到了500多人。这个数字几乎回到了2017年初的光景。大裁员消息曝出之后，1月7日，一直没有更多动作的詹克团发布了第二封公开信，反指责这是「近乎自杀的错误决定」，还称「为了比特大陆员工以及股东的利益，我必须站出来。」

不过，詹克团的行动最终被意外打断了。2020年1月底，新冠肺炎疫情在武汉爆发并逐步蔓延，整个中国的经济运转都被按下了暂停键。3月，全球金融市场陷入了动荡，道琼斯指数数次熔断，比特币价格一度跌到3800美元。5月，一些AI芯片公司开始破产。从事后来看，吴忌寒的裁员决定虽然残酷，但却是正确的。

2012年，吴忌寒把比特币比做香港半山的一栋楼：「比特币，将一个虚拟的离岸自由金融环境无缝嵌入到了全世界……现在买入比特币，就相当于在香港半山有了一栋楼。不要看现在山上除了树以外什么都没有，而要看到山脚下那鳞次栉比的Skyscrapers。」尽管过了这么些年，这段话仍时常被人提起，被称为「惊人之语」。

而在2020年3月底，吴忌寒在线上露面，再次谈到了他对行业的看法。经历了8年的风风雨雨，他一脸微笑、云淡风轻说：「其实我对比特币的看法没那么狂热了」。

这句话虽然没有蕴含「财富密码」，却在各个微信群里被人疯传，仿佛是在追念一去不复返的青春。

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