Wu Jihan is the rebel, Zhang Nangeng is the submissive

China's mining machine market is worth trillions of dollars, but it is controlled by two people.

They are Jihan Wu of Bitmain and Nangeng Zhang of Canaan Creative.

The fate of these two men overlapped many times, and they walked together, loving and hating each other, but in the end, they went in completely opposite directions.

Wu Jihan has been aggressive all the way, never submitting to the rules, ignoring them, trying to unify the industry and become the overlord.

However, Zhang Nangeng turned his destiny back on the right track of orthodox and compliance, embarked on the road to listing, and became a "successful person" in the traditional sense.

Who is the final winner?

01 Expedition

Zhang Nangeng's campus life at Beihang University was really boring.

He once watched 500 anime in a year and is becoming a typical 2D "otaku".

In 2010, Bitcoin burst into his world.

The enchantment and excitement of the Bitcoin world completely activated Zhang Nangeng's otaku heart.

At this time, he was quite excited by the counterattack experience of a talented young man named FriedCat.

Baked Cat announced that he has successfully developed an FPGA chip suitable for Bitcoin mining and has publicly raised funds for this purpose.

Fame, money, and spotlight all come to you in an instant.

But Zhang Nangeng could no longer hold back.

He appeared in the Bitcoin forum with the ID "ngzhang" and showed the world the FPGA mining machines - Icarus and Lancelot.

(A post by Zhang Nangeng using the ID “ngzhang” on the bitcointalk.org forum)

Both names come from Japanese anime.

In the Bitcoin world, Zhang Nangeng has earned the nickname "Pumpkin Zhang".

The ASIC mining machine that was originally scheduled to be launched at the end of 2012 encountered a bottleneck due to technical problems. Zhang Nangeng asked his tutor to take a year off, but was rejected.

"In that case, I might as well drop out of school." The 29-year-old Pumpkin Zhang made what might be the most rebellious decision of his life.

In November 2012, Nangua Zhang, a doctoral student at Beihang University, was lingering outside his advisor's office with a leave of absence application in hand, feeling nervous.

This 29-year-old "old boy" finally decided to leave the ivory tower and pursue the Bitcoin world in his heart.

After many twists and turns, the ASIC mining machine in his hand was finally successfully shipped out of the factory. Pumpkin Zhang named it "Avalon".

This name also comes from Japanese anime and is the strongest defensive weapon in "Fate".

There was a kind of heat flowing in Pumpkin Zhang's heart.

For him, mining machines are not just a business, but also a "weapon" to curb the centralization of Bitcoin.

At this time, Butterfly Labs in the United States announced the successful development of a Bitcoin mining machine based on ASIC technology.

But strangely, Butterfly did not sell mining machines.

At the same time, the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network has skyrocketed.

Everyone suspected that Butterfly Labs was secretly mining.

It's like a person who has gained a cheating channel and is madly sucking up the profits of the industry.

At this time, Pumpkin Zhang decided to sell mining machines in large quantities to resist the "atrocities" of the United States' attempt to monopolize: the way to break the monopoly is to use force.

The industry has ushered in a huge explosion in computing power.

This was the first time that Pumpkin Zhang showed his scholarly side, with a passion to defend the world.

But the miners are too crazy. The price of an Avalon mining machine has been as high as 400,000 RMB, and it is hard to find one on the market.

(Avalon mining machine at the Beijing Garage Coffee Bitcoin Party in 2013)

A 28-year-old investment banking elite, Wu Jihan, has also joined the army rushing to buy Avalon.

"What do you think is the most important thing in life?"

"Free and easy."

"What kind of life do you most desire?"

"Eat all day and do nothing; travel and have fun." In 2007, Wu Jihan, who was still a sophomore at Peking University, was called out by a female friend on Renren.com and asked to answer several questions about his "outlook on life" and "outlook on love."

The young and frivolous Wu Jihan had already shown obvious "liberal" tendencies at this time - but from then on, his life was far more exciting than "traveling around".

Mining machines are a highly profitable business, and Wu Jihan recognized this very early on.

Unable to get Avalon no matter what, he decided to make his own mining machine!

By chance, Wu Jihan met Zhan Ketuan, who was working on digital set-top box chips at the time. He invited Zhan Ketuan to join the company, but did not offer him a salary.

"If the mining chip is successfully developed, the entire technical team will obtain 60% of the shares." Zhan Ketuan accepted the request without much hesitation.

Wu Jihan named the company "Bitmain".

In mid-2013, under the leadership of Zhan Ketuan, the BM1380 chip based on 55nm technology was successfully developed, and Bitmain’s first mining machine, Ant S1, was born.

In 2013, when the mining machine market was booming, everyone was eager to get a piece of this lucrative market.

Thousands of troops have rushed into the mining machine market and are competing for supremacy.

However, they don’t know how 2013 will end in the Bitcoin world…

02 Divide

In December 2013, the central bank and five other ministries and commissions issued a “Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks.” Bitcoin prices plummeted instantly.

The global Bitcoin myth was shattered overnight.

Bitcoin has thus entered a long bear market that lasted for three years.

Pumpkin Zhang and Wu Jihan, whose life scrolls had just begun, could hardly sleep all night.

They entered the mining machine field almost at the same time and were both liberals, but their fates began to diverge during this low point.

At heart, Pumpkin Zhang is still a technology geek. Having studied integrated circuit design for 11 years, he is still obsessed with technology.

He once gave up assembling and selling mining machines and only sold mining machine chips.

As a result, a group of businessmen who smelled the profit began to assemble mining machines and then sell them - and they made even more money than Zhang Nangeng.

And their perfunctory and barbaric approach is also eroding the Avalon brand.

The tech geek Pumpkin Zhang obviously lacks some of the shrewdness of a businessman, and has a bit of the aloofness and loneliness of a scholar.

However, Wu Jihan is a typical businessman.

Moreover, he does not believe in fate.

“Low coin prices are often a good thing for the mining industry. Only competitive manufacturers can survive.”

In 2015, when being interviewed by the media, Wu Jihan lowered his head and said this expressionlessly.

However, looking back, Wu Jihan's words are still full of confidence.

Bitmain, which he founded, started to gain momentum when Bitcoin hit its low point after 2014, and eventually overtook its competitors.

In April 2014, Bitmain’s second mining machine, Antminer S2, went into mass production and sales; in June, the 28mm chip BM1382 was successfully developed; in July, Antminer S3 was launched; in September, Antminer S4 was launched; in December, Antminer S5 equipped with BM1384 went into mass production.

In one year, Bitmain has iterated four versions of Antminer.

In August 2015, Bitmain released the fourth-generation mining machine and chip BM1385. Antminer S7 equipped with this chip went into mass production three months later.

The total computing power of the entire Bitcoin network even skyrocketed due to the birth of this mining machine.

The S7 established Bitmain’s status in the industry. Bitmain made a huge profit of 400 million RMB just from this machine.

Always with a sneer that mocks fate, he goes against the will of heaven and changes his destiny, as rebellious as Wu Jihan.

When the cold winter of Bitcoin ended, Wu Jihan looked around and found that in the mining machine world, except for his old friend Pumpkin Zhang, he had no other rivals.

Two people who meet again in the world will probably smile at each other.

At this time, they should have a certain degree of mutual sympathy - survive the cold winter, stand proudly in the world, and divide the world.

Wu Jihan, who climbed to the iron throne of mining machines, did not stop there.

(The once immature Wu Jihan has now ascended to the iron throne of the mining machine industry)

Perhaps he has greater ambitions.

In August 2017, photos of a Bitcoin mine in Ordos, Inner Mongolia were exposed. Bloomberg called it "the world's largest Bitcoin mine."

The owner of these mines is Bitmain.

Bitmain has the world's largest Bitcoin computing power, through multiple mining farms hidden around the world, and through mining pools that gather a large number of small and medium-sized miners.

In November 2014, Bitmain launched Antpool, and within just four months, its computing power jumped to the top of the market. In 2016, Bitmain launched a new mining pool, BTC.com, and invested in another mining pool, ViaBTC.

Today, these three mining pools account for 49.6% of the total computing power of the Bitcoin network.

This means that Wu Jihan can easily launch a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network.

Having already secured his dominant position, Wu Jihan has begun his “subversion plan” – he wants to set new rules for Bitcoin.

In 2017, the ViaBTC mining pool invested by Bitmain suddenly launched a hard fork of Bitcoin: Bitcoin Cash (BCH) came into being.

In the eyes of some Bitcoin supporters, Wu Jihan has become the devil who splits Bitcoin.

In response to this, Wu Jihan would probably just smile coldly. Facing the outside world’s doubts about the centralization of BCH, he even cursed at netizens: “Fuck your mother if you want fuck.”

Despite this, the arrogant Wu Jihan still has a group of loyal fans around him.

At this moment, he has become the king of the Bitcoin world, making rules at will and commanding the world.

When Wu Jihan was making waves in the cryptocurrency circle, people were surprised to find that the affectionate nickname "Pumpkin Zhang" had disappeared from the world.

He began to use his real name: Zhang Nangeng.

When he started using this name, it meant that he had chosen a new life.

He, who was once addicted to the virtual world, slowly began to succumb to the rules of the game in the real world.

Zhang Nangeng chose a more realistic development path for his company Canaan Creative - seeking to be listed on the securities market and become a pure chip design company.

This is the traditional path of a "successful person", ringing the bell after going public and achieving fame and success.

In 2016, Luyitong (300423.SH), an A-share listed company specializing in electrical equipment, issued an announcement announcing the acquisition of Zhang Nangeng's Canaan Creative.

However, the transaction was halted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission due to the possibility of "backdoor listing".

A year later, Canaan Creative moved to the New Third Board, but gave up listing after receiving three rounds of feedback from the Stock Transfer Company and eventually moved to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

From "backdoor listing on the A-share market" to listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Canaan Creative's disclosed financial data showed that its revenue increased by 2,742% from RMB 47.69 million in 2015 to RMB 1.3 billion in 2017.

03 Submission and Rebellion

“Will Bitmain go public?”

In the 2015 "Yangyang Interview" program, Jin Yangyang, the wife of Bao Erye, a big boss in the cryptocurrency circle, once asked Wu Jihan this question.

At this time, Bitmain has reached the top of the food chain in the blockchain world.

The operating profit in 2017 reached a staggering 3 to 4 billion US dollars.

However, Wu Jihan did not answer this question directly, but told a more grand narrative story:

“We have long-term expectations that digital currency can improve human living conditions.

After the birth of digital currency, people who previously could not get banking services will also be able to get cheap loans. The cost of remittances and investments around the world will also be greatly reduced.”

At this time, Wu Jihan's power in the blockchain world is unprecedented.

It is rumored in the circle that Wu Jihan has a grand plan to establish a "digital currency center" in Africa, "similar to a central bank."

This news is not groundless. At the Washington Blockchain Summit in March 2018, Wu Jihan talked about "private central banks based on blockchain." In his vision, the "blockchain central bank" will be regarded as a real central bank by different countries.

“Bitmain is very interested in blockchain private central banks. These central banks can issue private currencies and legally sell this service to countries in need.”

"Bitmain will invest in 20 to 30 startups in this field in the future," said Wu Jihan.

Bitmain, based in Beijing, has shown its ambition to conquer the world.

However, Zhang Nangeng, who lives in Hangzhou, is fully prepared for the listing.

He shut down the company’s mining pool business 1Hash at the end of 2017.

Apart from the production of mining machines, this Hangzhou company has been completely isolated from the trivialities of the cryptocurrency circle.

Now, Canaan Creative is a pure chip and mining machine design company. In addition to mining machines, the company's new goal is to create more imaginative artificial intelligence hardware.

On April 22, Jiang Yang, vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, visited Canaan Creative. Under the influence of the ZTE incident, chips have become a national priority.

“No matter what your chips are used for, you are still a chip company in essence. We hope you can go public in China.”

Less than a month later, Canaan Creative submitted its prospectus in Hong Kong.

And various honors also come with it.

Canaan Creative won the championship in the Zhejiang Province Advanced Manufacturing Competition. The company established a blockchain party branch. Zhang Nangeng himself was selected as one of the first 25 "leading talents in science and technology entrepreneurship" in Zhejiang Province.

Today, the mining machines produced by Canaan Creative are still named "Avalon".

Avalon is the strongest defensive weapon in the Japanese anime "Fate".

Perhaps, from the beginning of the story, Zhang Nangeng’s dream was not to change, but to defend the world.

He grabbed wealth in the virtual world and submitted to the rules of the game in the real world.

Wu Jihan, on the other hand, seems to be telling a rebellious story through his "Antminer", that "ants are small but can shake the world."

Then, who will be the final champion? Who is the final winner?

note

Did you find it?

The blockchain world that everyone first envisioned was free and decentralized.

But today, our blockchain world is becoming extremely centralized.

In China, the exchange market is divided among Huobi, Binance and OKCoin; and the mining machine business has been swallowed up by Bitmain and Canaan Creative.

Isn’t this contrary to the spirit of blockchain?

"Centralized products are definitely transitional products in the blockchain world. Eventually, there will be decentralized ways to replace them." Many big names in the industry have expressed this view.

Wu Jihan is taking the path of monopoly, while Zhang Nangeng is turning to technology. At this point, we still don’t know who will stand at the forefront of the future.

Time will tell us the answer.