[셔터스톡]
Bitmain co-founder Ji-han Woo posted a letter written in English on January 26 at 10:05 pm (local time) on Twitter and officially announced the resignation of Bitmain CEO and Chairman. According to Jihan Woo’s Twitter letter, which BlockBeats reported on the early morning of the 27th, Jihan Woo said, “We have reached a final agreement with co-founder Jan Ketuol and we firmly believe that Bitmain will succeed in IPO.” I finished my day of work.
According to the letter, Jan Ketuol will buy half of Wu Jihan’s stake with $400 million borrowed from Bitmain and $200 million externally raised. Bitmain currently holds $328 million in cash. Jihan Woo divides and takes over an overseas mining site from Bitdeer, a cloud mining business, and takes over as chairman of Bitdeer. Woo Ji-han’s two heads of finance and management will sit on Bitmain’s board of directors until Bitmain is listed. As of January 26th, all of Bitmain’s subsidiaries have entered the process of changing their corporations.
What path will Bitmain spin off in the future?
According to the analysis, first, in the case of Bitmain, which produces bitcoin miners, the chip production volume this year is almost completely sold out. Therefore, it is expected to start selling in 2022 sooner or later. However, the quality and yield of the 5nm chip is not accurately revealed, so it is a question mark.
Second, there is a possibility that Bitmain will sequentially launch small and medium-sized coin miners such as Ethereum, LTC, DASH, and BTM. At this time, securing chip production volume is also the key.
Third, there are rumors that Bitmain is recruiting a new CFO to prepare for listing. At the request of investors, Bitmain must be listed with a value of over $5 billion by the end of 2022. However, it is not easy to proceed with an IPO at this level, and it can be said that it depends on the price of bitcoin.
Fourth, a new CEO has been appointed to Bitdeer, Woo Ji-han’s divided business unit, and a total of 200 employees will work. The company will do business such as cloud computing power (past Bitdeer’s main business), mining pool (past BTC.com’s work), overseas mining pit, mining machine trading platform, and mining machine maintenance, and the final goal is to be listed on NASDAQ. .
Fifth, Woo Ji-han’s hands include Matrixport, a financial business, Bitdeer, a mining business, and cryptocurrencies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, there is no possibility of creating venture capital and making new investments in the future.
Sixth, Jihan Wu still holds some stake in Bitmain and can appoint two directors who will be in charge of finance and audit (most likely the investor requested) until Bitmain is successfully listed. This is likely to help in normal operation until Bitmain is listed.
However, the difficulties facing both sides are not small. Jankertøn’s Bitmain needs to improve its management system, take lessons from 18-19 years of failure, and successfully close its IPO. Jihan Woo’s Bitdeer is not supported by existing Bitmain and Anppool, and cloud mining and mining pools are relatively competitive markets, so it remains to be seen whether they can successfully independently go to the final NASDAQ listing.
The following is the full text of Woo Ji-han’s resignation letter.
The conflict between Bitmain’s two co-founders Micree (Jan Ketuan) and Na (Jihan Woo) was finally resolved in a friendly way, and more importantly in a constructive manner. Today I resigned as CEO and Chairman of Bitmain.
Jankertuel bought nearly half of Bitmain shares held by Bitsource (codename for a group of founding shareholders including me) for $600 million. To complete the stock purchase, Jan Ketuol has pledged to take a $400 million loan from Bitmain and raise an additional $200 million from outside the group.
As of yesterday, Bitmain holds fiat currency of $328 million, twice the cash required by preferred stocks to reach the settlement agreement. The short-term liquidity fund shortage is $92 million. Some funding shortages are very light for Bitmain. Because, on the other hand, Bitmain has some of the best miners on the market. Therefore, Bitmain’s financial situation is in good shape and healthy, and loans to Zankatoon will not have any negative impact on the sustainability of Bitmain’s operations.
According to a consensus reached at the same time, today BitDeer, the US and Norway’s mines are separated from Bitmain. I am the chairman of Bit Deer. Matt Kong will be the CEO of Bitdeer. Antpool will sooner or later be split from an independent company led by the Zankatoon Group.
With the consensus mentioned above, Bitmain’s business model is very intuitive and the road to IPO will be smoother. According to this agreement, the number of stocks in the hands of investors in Round B and Round B+ has doubled to meet the valuation adjustment. Their potential return on investment became clearer.
From now on to the listing of Bitmain, Bitmain’s board of directors consists of 5 members, of which Janktuol has the right to appoint 3 and I have the right to appoint the remaining 2. For Bitmain’s interests, I asked two colleagues, Zhu Xiang and Liu Jianchun, who are more capable than me, as board members. Zhou Xiang was one of Bitmain’s founding members, leading the hardware design of Bitmain’s most important miners S1 and S19. Liu Jianchun has been Chief Financial Auditor and CFO for the past five years. The two board members will consider Bitmain’s overall interests, not the interests of individual shareholders.
Depending on the company’s management distribution, the two were responsible for risk management and internal audit, respectively. As part of the leadership transfer, all subsidiaries belonging to the Bitmain Group today started changing board members or corporate representatives.
After reaching an agreement today, I have no doubts that Bitmain has opened a new chapter and has a huge opportunity. As Bitmain’s co-founder, I enjoyed the 2,815-day journey and received selfless help and support from many customers, colleagues, friends and investors. At the same time, I would like to send a blessing with the best sincerity to Janker Tuel and the Bitmain he leads.