Who is in charge of Bitmain?

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It has been confirmed that Bitmain is intentionally delaying the shipment of its ASIC hardware from its Shenzhen factory. 

Don’t order antminer from bitmain anymore, cuz you won’t be able to receive it for awhile. after Micree took back the control of bitmain, he’s now control the bitmain’s factory in Shenzhen , and started to stopped the shippment of antminers. https://t.co/wjV3463bPL pic.twitter.com/l1NdtR32mZ

— Molly (@bigmagicdao) June 11, 2020

The head of marketing at HashKey Hub noted that a post on China’s microblogging platform Weibo warned others not to order from Bitmain because the shipment would not arrive. The post read:

“Don’t order Antminer from Bitmain anymore, cuz you won’t be able to receive it for a while. After Micree took back the control of Bitmain, he now controls the Bitmain’s factory in Shenzhen, and has stopped the shipment of antminers.”

Bitmain’s internal struggles

There is a civil war going on at Bitmain. A recently overturned court ruling that reinstated Micree Zhan as the company’s legal representative after he had been reportedly ousted by Jihan Wu in October has created numerous problems for the company. 

After forked Bitcoin, Bitmain now forked itself. The company divided to two after the ugly power flight. After Micree took back the legal control of Bitmain located in Beijing, Jihan forced all bitmain employees resigned to sign new contract a new company in Chongqing.

— Molly (@bigmagicdao) May 9, 2020

According to Molly, Bitmain is operating as if it has forked itself. Zhan is the legal representative of the company, which gives him complete power and authority of the company, its capital and assets. Wu, on the other hand, is reportedly the owner of Bitmain’s intellectual property.

So who’s in charge?

Apparently, both co-founders are in charge—at least on paper.

Bitmain Class : 北京比特大陆科技有限公司 , the old bitmain in Beijing control by Micree

Bitmain: 重庆硅原大陆科技有限公司, new forked Bitmain in Jihan’s home town Chongqing, also the payment term for ANTMINERs all changed to this company pic.twitter.com/vsJmzRlip4

— Molly (@bigmagicdao) May 9, 2020

Zhan is in control of Bitmain Beijing, while Wu is in control of Bitmain Chongqing. However, from the outside looking in, or even employees, it can be unclear to see who the real leader is. Or, in relation to our hard fork analogy, which founder has the longest chain. 

Molly claims that once the court reinstated Zhan, Wu terminated all of Bitmain employee’s contracts and forced them to sign new contracts with Bitmain Chongqing. But once Zhan regained control of the Bitmain Beijing office, he sent a letter to employees encouraging them to come into work at the Beijing office. This makes it unclear which Bitmain is really running the show.

In addition, a recent letter from Bitmain claims that an individual had unauthorized access to the Bitmain WeChat channel and that all posts on that channel that were published before June 11 are “fake.” It is not clear which of the two co-founders had control of the account before that date.  

Even though Bitmain’s battles are internal, they are affecting customers as well. The delayed shipment of ASIC mining hardware from the Shenzhen factory has caused many of its customers to cancel their orders and order from rival companies.