Personnel changes at Bitmain. What happened?

Personnel changes at Bitmain. What happened? Recently, Mikri Ketuan Zhang, who is the senior executive director of Bitmain, was removed from his position. The staff was informed via an internal mailing that the co-founder and one of the largest shareholders was removed from the company’s management. Moreover, Jihan Wu, the current chairman of the board, strictly forbade his employees to have any interaction with this person. As you know, at lunchtime, he sent a message to all employees’ inboxes with important information. Currently, Jihan Wu is the CEO of Bitmain. He deemed it necessary to suspend Ketuan Mikri Chan from all work, and demanded that his order be carried out immediately. Based on this, the company may decide to terminate any employment contracts with violators of this order. The main share of Bitmain shares is in the hands of Mikri Zhang This event was quite unexpected. It is worth reminding that exactly a year ago, Wu had already left the CEO’s position for unknown reasons. At that time, he began to play a non-executive role on the board of directors. This means that he was not part of the senior executive management. As a rule, Wu did not take part in the company’s operational management. However, he determined the direction of its future development. The crypto industry community today may not really understand what kind of reaction to show to the events taking place. For example, Primitive Crypto (a founding partner), as well as a representative of CoinDesk named Dovi Wen, insists that Wu was particularly assertive. On Twitter, the woman wrote the following: “Wow, this was much more dramatic than I thought it would be.” She also believes that Jihan Wu decided to control Bitmain himself. He needed to do this in order to regain the leading position in the mining market. According to her, Wu claimed that he “came to save a sinking ship.” It should be noted that the information about the letter came from an employee of the firm, who was never named. At the same time, the mailing took place on Tuesday morning. Interestingly, shortly before that, news of a corporate restructuring was announced during the registration with the state authorities. According to the information received, Wu took on the duties of the company’s CEO and legal representative. It is currently unknown why Bitmain’s board made this decision and whether it plans to buy some of the shares owned by Mikri Zhang. Back in September 2018, the company applied for an IPO. At that time, Zhang was still one of the largest shareholders with a 36% stake. Interestingly, at that time, Wu had only 20%. Samson Mou, Head of Security at Blockstream, also commented on the situation. He assumed that Mikri Zhang was morally pressured, so he decided to leave Bitmain. He also adds that this is some confusing game played by Jihan Wu, so it is unclear how it will all end. In general, Bitcoin, which has been rising in price this year, has been able to create quite favorable conditions for the company itself as well as other players. It has become known that only a week ago, the company’s management talked about their future plans. They planned to create the largest mining complex in Texas. And this is not unfounded, as the project has already begun. However, the situation at Bitmain remains unresolved. It is completely unclear whether and how Mikri Zhang will oppose the decision. After all, a large part of the company’s shares is still a lot of power.