first level title
Jihan Wu and Ketuan Zhan will be the final winners of the IPO?
With his baby face, metal-rimmed glasses, T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, Jihan Wu looks more like a teenage geek than a billionaire. But thanks to his early entry into the cryptocurrency market, the 32-year-old may already be one of the biggest names in the industry.
Bitmain, controlled by Jihan Wu, is the world's largest maker of cryptocurrency mining chips. Since its founding five years ago, the company has kept a very low profile. But now, Wu Jihan is trying to uncover the mystery of Bitmain layer by layer-because he hopes to further expand in the encryption industry, he may eventually choose to list Bitmain.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Wu Jihan revealed that Bitmain’s revenue last year reached 2.5 billion US dollars, and he and another co-founder Ketuan Zhan jointly own 60% of the company’s shares. Although there is no "reference object" for this type of company in Bitmain, if you refer to listed chip manufacturers such as Nvidia and MediaTek, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates that Bitmain's company valuation will reach 88%. billion U.S. dollars—in other words, the value of shares held by Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan will reach 5.3 billion U.S. dollars.
first level title
Get Sequoia and IDG Capital out?
In view of the uncertainty of digital assets and the limited public information of Bitmain, many people have speculated about Bitmain's corporate value and Wu Jihan's personal wealth.
But if Bitmain is successfully listed, all these doubts will change now. An IPO listing will not only allow Bitmain to face the world openly and honestly, but also reflect their company value in real time through the reaction of the stock market. Although Wu Jihan said that there is no specific plan yet, he said that he can list in Hong Kong, or choose US dollar-denominated stocks to list overseas-the reason for this may be that they hope to let Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital in Early investors within have the opportunity to cash out and exit successfully.
There is no doubt that whether it is for Bitmain or the entire encryption industry, the IPO listing will be a milestone event - at least it will allow Bitmain to walk in the sun. At this stage, regulatory agencies in various countries are very cautious about cryptocurrency mining companies, development companies, and venture capital companies. If Bitmain can "take the lead" and choose to go public to improve corporate transparency, it will undoubtedly inject a boost to the cryptocurrency market.
first level title
against competitors?
Bitmain’s biggest competitor, Canaan Inc., has filed for an IPO in Hong Kong. People familiar with the matter said they plan to raise $1 billion. Bitmain’s revenue last year was about 12 times that of Canaan Inc. .
Both companies are in the business of custom mining chips known as application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, that are especially useful for the brute-force numerical calculations required by cryptocurrency miners. Miners are required to verify virtual currency transactions by solving complex mathematical problems and earn rewards denominated in cryptocurrencies.
Canaan’s cryptocurrency mining equipment accounts for 15% of the ASIC market, while Bitmain controls about 90% of the cryptocurrency mining hardware market (as shown in the above chart, Bitmain’s market share reaches 75%). In addition, Bitmain also operates the largest mining pools - Antpool (Antpool) and BTC.com.
In fact, many people in the industry have expressed concern about the impact of these two mining groups on the Bitcoin market, because doing so violates the original intention of the decentralized spirit of cryptocurrency, which also arouses dissatisfaction in the encryption community.
