Personnel, finance, and covert warfare: What information did the Bitmain Chengdu conference reveal?

On the afternoon of the 7th, Bitmain held its 2019 Customer Appreciation Party at the Fairmont Palm Springs Hotel in Chengdu. This was also the first public appearance of Bitmain and Wu Jihan after the removal of Zhan Ketuan from all positions, and several pieces of information were released to the public, which are worth interpreting.

First, Wu Jihan took on the heavy responsibility of CEO and reduced his personnel power.

Wu Jihan's public title at the meeting was Chairman and CEO of Bitmain. Wang Haichao no longer serves as CEO and has returned to his original supply chain position.

After the 12.17 incident in 2018, Wang Haichao once served as CEO. At the general meeting on the afternoon of the day when Zhan Ketuan was removed from his position, Wu Jihan also expressed his recognition of Wang Haichao's work.

In addition, the meeting was mainly chaired by Fan Xiaojun, an early employee of the sales team, indicating that after the previous sales director from Huawei was dismissed, he was mainly responsible for the sales work.

An insider said that this shows that although he has repeatedly said that his personality is not suitable for being a CEO, Wu Jihan is still determined to shoulder the responsibility of the entire company. At present, Shenma is in fierce competition in the industry, Canaan has successfully listed, and Xindong is chasing closely. At this difficult time for Bitmain, he must shoulder the heavy responsibility.

Wang Haichao played an important role in expanding production capacity in 2017, and therefore even received double honors at the annual meeting at the end of 2017. It is also a very appropriate choice for him to return to the familiar and important supply chain position at this time.

Second, enrich financial products and deepen cooperation with Matrixport

Matrix is ​​a new company related to digital currency finance founded by Wu Jihan after the 1217 incident. Bitmain will provide financial products provided by Matrix to users who purchase mining machines to balance risks. Matrix also provides one-stop financial services such as OTC, lending, and custody for miners. After Wu Jihan's return, the cooperative relationship between Matrix and Bitmain will be closer. In addition, Bitmain has also adjusted the down payment ratio for mining machine sales and provided a model of cooperating with mineral resources for mining.

Third, the secret battle between Bitcoin and Shenma

The much-anticipated S19 Antminer was not released at this event. The S17 and T17 series are still the main products, and Bitmain said that "the life cycle of S17 is theoretically forever." This shows that Bitmain currently has a lot of 17 series inventory, and it will also be the main model. Bitmain is worried that promoting S19 too early will make it difficult to sell S17.

The PPT said that as long as no better machine than S17Pro is produced, it can continue to work. However, Shenma Mining Machine seemed to know about Bitmain's meeting in advance, and publicly released the long-rumored M30S mining machine through WeChat public account in the early morning of the 7th, with performance indicators slightly exceeding S17Pro. Previously, Wu Blockchain also exclusively released the progress of M30S mass production and S19. (Reference: Shenma M30S has returned to mass production and is about to be mass-produced. Antminer wants to compete with speed in performance)

However, compared with the 38J/T of M30S and the 39.5J/T of S17PRO, the improvement is not great. The key to the competition between the two is still the competition between production capacity and economy. In addition, the S19PRO, which is about to return the film, will reach 30J/T. Although the mass production speed is 2-3 weeks slower than Shenma, its performance will be better.

In 2019, Bitmain lost some market advantages, largely due to TSMC’s insufficient 7nm production capacity and overpriced products. It can be expected that before the Bitcoin price is halved, the battle between the high-computing mining machines M20 (1)/S17/M30/S19 will continue.