Yang Zuoxing of Shenma Mining Machine: Five years of hard work, now we are testing our edge

The first issue of the Wabi.com celebrity awards

Wabi.com had an in-depth dialogue with Yang Zuoxing at the 2019 New Era Mining Summit

“When Heaven bestows a great responsibility on a man, it is first to test his mind and will, to toil his muscles and bones, to starve his body, to deprive him of all want, and to make his plans frustrated. This is to stimulate his heart and harden his nature, and increase his ability to do what he could not do before.” Before I started writing about Dr. Yang, I first thought of this passage from Mencius: Gaozi, Part 2. It is very appropriate to describe Dr. Yang.

It takes five years to sharpen a sword. It started in 2014 when he entered the mining machine industry. Of course, before that, Dr. Yang had been dormant in many fields for several times. Finally, he came to this field where he is more proficient and showed his skills. The achievements he made in five years are beyond the reach of his colleagues in the industry. In the interview, Dr. Yang briefly described his achievements and sorrows in the past few years. In stark contrast to his passionate performance on the stage, he was extremely calm and restrained off the stage. When talking about the difficult situation he experienced in 2017-2018, he even had a Buddhist mentality of a bystander. People can't help but sigh that difficulties are a cage that hinders progress for the weak, but difficulties are a stubborn stone for sharpening swords for the strong.

Image: Yang Zuoxing at the 2019 New Era Mining Summit

(The following is part of the interview)

MiningCoin.com : In 2018, you told the media that MicroBT had plans to go public. Has it been put on the agenda this year?

Yang Zuoxing : I am still communicating with the president of the bank today. For such a long time, I have been struggling many times over whether to list MicroBit or not. If we list, we will open up a broader large fund market, and the regulated company will be more reasonable and transparent; if we do not list, we can follow our own ideas, without considering short-term returns, and can focus on the company's core competitiveness in the long term. Each has its own advantages. This world will always be a world where black and white will coexist in various forms.

Mining Network : As the next Bitcoin halving approaches, mining is becoming more and more of a capital competition for miners. What do you think small miners should do in this situation?

Yang Zuoxing : That's right. Everyone has felt it now. From buying mining machines to getting electricity from power plants, small miners have no advantages. Before, people would take care of you if you had hundreds of machines, but now they don't care about you even if you have hundreds of machines. In the future, mining will have to be more professional. Both mining machine manufacturers and mine owners must be more professional. Only large-scale specialization can attract more off-site funds and be more conducive to the development of the industry. In this case, I personally suggest, as I said today, that in the future, the sales of mining machines will directly cut the computing power in the mine, whether you buy one or 1T. If the market is good, buy more, and if the market is not good, give it to the next one. In this way, it can be cut in seconds, which is a better form.

Mining Network : Shenma launched the M20s in April 2019, with a computing power of up to 68T. It can be said to be the best-performing model on the market. Dr. Yang, in what aspects can Shenma's next-generation products achieve breakthroughs?

Yang Zuoxing : In terms of product performance, there are only two indicators for mining machines, one is how many W per T, and the other is how much money per T. Of course, reliability and return rate are still necessary. You can make the power consumption very low with these two indicators, but the cost will be very high. We currently believe that this is not a good choice for miners. Another direction is to lower the power consumption and the cost will also be lower, but because the off-chip costs cannot be spread out, such as the power supply cost, it will reach a compromise point. The best compromise point is that the proportion of power consumption reduction is equal to the proportion of cost reduction, which is the best situation. Because the mining cost is the fixed cost and variable cost of the machine added together, Shenma has always adhered to the stable model of making miners have better returns, faster payback period, and better long-term returns.

MWC : We all know that Jack Ma has retired this year, but Dr. Yang has been playing a key role in Shenma's R&D work. Do you plan to stay at the forefront for a long time, or are you already focusing on training the next generation of R&D backbones?

Yang Zuoxing : This question is different for each company. I personally think that people like Ren Zhengfei and Steve Jobs are like gods. For a company to excel, it has a lot to do with the style of its founder. These people must have some characteristics to succeed. If this characteristic is everywhere, it cannot be called a characteristic. Jack Ma used to be a teacher. He is good at educating people and using people, so he can be a hands-off shopkeeper now. The hands-off shopkeepers behind OPPO and VIVO are also doing very well. This is their characteristic. I personally may be more like Ren Zhengfei or Steve Jobs. I will implement the spirit of extreme concentration of Shenma to everyone, so that everyone has higher requirements for themselves. I think my working hours will be longer.

WABIN.COM : It is said that a real man will never look back at the explosion, but we still can’t help but ask you to take stock of your 2018, because Mr. Ao of Xindong also said that your 2018 was really difficult. What do you think?

Yang Zuoxing : To be honest, I had a lot of troubles from 2017 to 2018. Both 2017 and 2018 were quite difficult for me, but we gradually overcame all these difficulties. Here I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my friendly competitors. They gave me great strength and pushed me to move forward. If it weren’t for them pushing me, I might not be able to move so fast.

After the interview, Dr. Yang took photos with reporters from various media outlets. He was very friendly and attracted countless fans on the spot. We believe that under the leadership of Dr. Yang, MicroBT will create more industry legends.

*Original article from Wabi.com. Please do not reprint without permission.