Dialogue with Ant Training Academy: How to solve the current problems of high prices, small number of personnel, and high time costs in the mining machine maintenance market?

From October 8th to 10th, the Global Digital Mining Summit was successfully held in Frankfurt, Germany.

It is reported that this summit has brought together digital currency mining elites from all over the world, including more than 30 industry-leading experts, more than 100 top crypto mining companies and more than 1,000 participants. The most senior and innovative authorities in the mining industry have gathered together.

Judging from the author's experience of attending the conference on site, this summit mainly focused on the investment and innovation level of digital currency mining. After several days of meeting agenda, most of the big names and participating guests discussed various financial solutions and optimization plans for digital mining, which can be said to be full of practical information.

At the conference, the author also met many practitioners from China, but what I mainly want to introduce to you here is a team that everyone has heard of but is not very familiar with - Ant Training Academy.

Ant Training Academy WDMS 2019 booth

According to the staff, Ant Training Academy is a training service upgrade project launched this year by Bitmain based on years of knowledge dissemination and technology inheritance. From the initial internal training to the "key customer maintenance training" launched to the outside world in 2017, it has been committed to improving the overall level of personnel in the industry and promoting the sustainable development of the industry's overall ecology.

Why did Bitmain set up an independent "Ant Training Academy"? What needs can it solve? What is the difference between it and other projects on the market ? With these questions, we talked with the staff of Ant Training Academy, and shared with you the original intention and current situation of "Ant Training Academy" and their views on the industry.

| The current mining machine maintenance market has an imbalance between supply and demand, high prices, few staff, and high time costs

Gyro Finance: Why did you create an independent brand like "Ant Training Academy"? What is the current relationship between Ant Training Academy and Bitmain?

Ant Training Academy: The predecessor of Ant Training Academy was the "key customer maintenance training" launched by Bitmain in 2017. It is a training service brand launched by Bitmain and the only officially certified training institution and certification agency for Antminer.

At present, the supply and demand of the mining machine maintenance market is unbalanced, with problems such as high maintenance market prices, shortage of maintenance personnel, and high maintenance time costs for customers. Ant Training Academy is an after-sales service upgrade brand launched by Bitmain in this context. With training as the main method, the purpose is to improve the overall level of personnel in the industry and promote the sustainable development of the industry's overall ecology.

Ant Training Academy

Gyro Finance: Generally speaking, what is the most important thing in the daily operation and maintenance of a mine?

Ant Training Academy: The most important thing in daily operation and maintenance is safety, including personnel safety, computing power safety, asset safety, etc.

Safety is the lifeline of mine operation and maintenance, and needs to be ensured by formulating safety standards and conducting standardized management. Safety standards are rigid and easy to achieve, but standardized management and refined farming have no limits.

Currently, Bitmain’s own mining farms minimize safety risks by formulating and implementing a series of standardized SOPs, covering a full range of processes such as factory environment maintenance, electrical network equipment maintenance, machine operation and maintenance services, and natural disaster emergency response.

| Differences between Chinese and foreign miners

Gyro Finance: Some people say that there are huge differences between Chinese and foreign miners. What do you think?

Ant Training Academy: We do not think there are huge differences between Chinese and foreign miners, because everyone is ultimately pursuing the maximization of investment benefits.

In the process of pursuing maximum investment benefits, some miners focus on long-term interests, while some miners pursue immediate interests for the purpose of speculation. However, I believe that these have nothing to do with the region and are not the differences between Chinese and foreign miners .

Of course, due to the time cost and logistics cost of repairing mining machines, when a mining machine fails and needs to be repaired, overseas miners will need to pay a higher repair cost. Therefore, overseas miners need to increase their investment in mine construction and operation and maintenance management, and reduce the failure rate of mining machines through standardized management. At the same time, it is recommended to cultivate their own maintenance team so that the mine has the ability to handle failures and repair mining machines in a timely manner.

Gyro Finance: At the WDMS summit, some overseas miners said they would rather pay a high price to hire local people to repair their mining machines than to send them to China. Is this a common situation? Why does this happen?

Ant Training Academy: This situation does exist.

Because the repair of mining machine failure will not only incur time and logistics costs, but will also lead to direct loss of income for miners.

As the price of cryptocurrencies continues to fluctuate, time is money for miners, especially for overseas miners, who have to bear more costs and losses to repair faulty machines.

Therefore, it is recommended that overseas miners have a certain ability to do self-repairs in addition to the return repair channels. This ability to respond to and handle mining machine failures in a timely manner will earn miners more profits.

Overseas students learn the Antminer after-sales maintenance course

| Current situation and vision of Ant Training Academy

Gyro Finance: How many sessions has Ant Training Academy opened so far? What are the student registration information and pass rate?

Ant Training Academy: As of October 2019, Ant Training Academy has opened 8 maintenance training courses in the second half of the year, including 5 level 1 courses and 3 level 2 courses.

Currently, more than 400 people have registered on the official website, and the registered students mainly come from China, Russia, Malaysia, Canada, etc.

Among them, more than 150 people participated in the training and completed the course, with a pass rate of about 80%.

Ant Training Academy Certificate of Completion

Gyro Finance: How was your booth at the WDMS summit? What were the main questions that visitors asked?

Ant Training Academy: Ant Training Academy set up an "Internet celebrity wall", chip welding experience, disassembly and assembly competition and other activities at its booth at this WDMS. It is one of the most distinctive and popular booths at the summit.

Most of the on-site consultations were about the college's course content, course schedule and registration channels. In addition, many consultants hoped that the college could provide more relevant training overseas.

Gyro Finance: What are the plans and visions for Ant Training Academy in the coming year?

Ant Training Academy: On the one hand, Ant Training Academy will continue to recruit students and continuously train Antminer maintenance personnel around the world to provide strong support for the sustainable development of the Antminer ecosystem.

On the other hand, we will continue to optimize the Antminer maintenance training courses , add more new models, control panels, power supplies and other content, to provide a more comprehensive and complete training experience for the majority of miners.

In addition , we will develop training courses such as mine operation and maintenance and mine construction based on the needs of different customer groups, providing diversified course options for various groups of people in the mining industry .