Editor's Note: This article comes fromLianBit (ID: William1913), Author: William Chen, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
text
Editor's Note: This article comes from
LianBit (ID: William1913)
, Author: William Chen, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
On December 21, 2017, while Bitcoin skyrocketed, the price of Bitcoin Cash also skyrocketed to more than $4,000. That was Wu Jihan's highlight moment. The soaring prices of BCH and BTC made his mining machines out of stock forever.
At that moment, if Wu Jihan wanted someone to get rich, all he had to do was send him a batch of original-priced mining machines. What is God of Wealth? This is the God of Wealth.
No one knows how many bitcoins Wu Jihan owns, but during the 2017 bitcoin bull market, Wu Jihan should be the real "richest man in the currency circle". And this "real richest man in the currency circle", a man who pays attention to making a fortune in silence and is called "Thanos" by foreigners, was listed as Coindesk's Person of the Year in 2016 and 2017.
The high-spirited Wu Jihan sent the last tweet in 2017, "Why do I have both BTC and BCH in my wallet? This is not acceptable. There should be a wallet with only BCH."
When Wu Jihan was confidently preparing to lead BCH to overtake in a corner in 2018, he did not expect that the 2018 waiting for him would not be exciting, and it might even be his "darkest moment" in Bitmain. Wu Jihan's 2018 can be described in a few words, but forgive me, I can't choose a neutral word, because it is really too bad: "two kings are fighting", "IPO failure", "gamble Failure", "the scenery is no longer".
What made Wu Jihan and the currency circle even more unexpected was that the currency circle was originally in late autumn, but after an incident, it completely fell into the cold winter. This event is the hard fork of BCH:
Jihan Wu in 2017 seemed invincible, but after 2018 and before yesterday, Jihan Wu seemed to be in a desperate situation.
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1. Forced to leave
In the currency circle, there is rarely a simple photo that can refresh the entire currency circle of friends, especially when there is only one person in this photo. But at the end of January 2019, a photo swiped the entire circle of friends, and this photo was just a very simple "big photo". This is a generation of mining bullies who have not appeared in people's sight for more than a month -- Jihan Wu:
Wu Jihan, who is often called "baby face" by people, appeared in front of people with a "face" that everyone had never imagined. After BCH experienced a fork computing power war and fell to a minimum of 74.15 US dollars, Bitmain was in crisis. After the dilemma of layoffs and mine liquidation, it was also after Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan stepped down as CEOs at the same time.
The screen was also swiped, and there was a photo of Jihan Wu and Ketuan Zhan in the same frame. This photo was also made into an "invincible" emoji by people in the past two days:
After these two photos swept the screen of the currency circle, Wu Jihan reappeared in the news of the currency circle, and it was already the news that "Wu Jihan gradually faded out of Bitmain".
Who would have thought that Bitmain, who has always been equated with Wu Jihan, is not the person with the most shares. It wasn’t until 2018 that Bitmain’s prospectus for listing was exposed that people discovered that Bitmain was indeed very profitable and had indeed bought a lot of BCH, but the most important thing was that Ketuan Zhan surfaced.
The reason why Wu Jihan faded out of Bitmain is also very simple. The conflict between him and Ketuan Zhan has been continuously magnified in the endless bear market. According to an employee who has left Bitmain, the main difference between Jihan Wu and Ketuan Zhan is that Jihan Wu focuses on the blockchain, while Ketuan Zhan focuses on chips and AI.
"When the company was well-funded, both of them had the money and the team to realize their dreams, so it was not a big problem; but when the bear market came and the company was no longer as well-funded as before, the problem appeared."
A former employee of Bitmain said, “Especially during the company’s last round of large-scale layoffs, the two people had a big difference of opinion. Both sides believed that the other party’s strategic judgment had made a mistake, and they were unhappy with the large number of layoffs of employees in their areas of concern. .In such a harsh external environment, the founders need to make immediate adjustments, but if anyone refuses to accept the other, the company will miss opportunities bit by bit. In the end, Jihan Wu made concessions."
At the beginning of 2019, the entire currency circle was still shrouded in the fear of not knowing when the bear market would end. In the wave of several giants in the currency circle closing down, layoffs and even running away one after another, "this round of bear market will end with the bankruptcy of Bitmain Is it?" The speech filled the entire currency circle. It seems that only the fall of the sickle can bring about the spring of the industry.
Bitmain really almost fell during that time. According to mining professionals, if Bitcoin hadn’t given hope in time in April, and if it dragged on for another half a year, Bitmain might not be able to survive.
Bitmain is still very lucky, but Wu Jihan seems not so lucky.
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2. Comeback
Under the background of the Bitcoin bear market from 2018 to the beginning of 2019, coupled with the fact that Ketuan Zhan owns the most shares in Bitmain, many people saw that Wu Jihan began to fade out of people's sight. And when he appeared in people's sight once, Wu Jihan's identity was the boss of a financial company Matrix. According to Bloomberg, Jihan Wu had resigned from Bitmain before mid-2019, but he still had shares but no rights.
Even in Phoenix.com’s report, “Bitmain” was directly referred to as Wu Jihan’s “old club”:
It seems that Jihan Wu has completely left Bitmain.
No one would have thought that Wu Jihan would be kicked out of the company he founded in such a disgraceful way, just as no one would have thought that Wu Jihan would be so thunderous when he made a comeback.
On October 29, 2019, after Bitmain had kept a low profile for a long time, many people thought that their next big news would be going public. Unexpectedly, an email suddenly appeared in the community during lunch time.
For a while, people in the media were asking for proof, people who eat melons were discussing, and investors began to prepare to buy BCH.
Shortly after this open letter was issued, the person in charge of personnel was also fired. The outside world generally believes that Bitmain is experiencing a "personnel change earthquake". Afterwards, Wu Jihan urgently held a full-staff meeting.
During the one-hour meeting, Wu Jihan recounted the mismanagement of Ketuan Zhan, and appeased the public anger caused by the organizational restructuring that Ketuan Zhan implemented internally, and asked everyone to unite as one, choose the right direction, and not go further down the wrong path further away.
It is said that Wu Jihan was quite emotional at the subsequent staff meeting, and he said to the staff: "I must come back to save this company."
Although they did not hear this sentence with their own ears, BCH supporters were still outraged and jubilant.
About an hour after the open letter was issued, Yang Haipo, considered Wu Jihan's "most loyal comrade-in-arms," posted on Weibo:
Everyone knew what happened, as if the most exciting Gongdou drama was fast forwarded before everyone's eyes.
At this time, Ketuan Zhan, who was dismissed, had just rushed back to Beijing and found that he could not enter the company. And just the day before, as the boss of Bitmain, he expressed Bitmain's grand AI vision at the Shenzhen Security Expo.
But he did not expect that while he was imagining Bitmain's AI future, Wu Jihan scolded Ketuan Zhan's chip casting decision in 2018 during a meeting in the office, which cost the company a lot of manpower and material resources, and also caused a direct loss of 15 One hundred million U.S. dollars.
In short, Ketuan Zhan gradually lost popular support, coupled with the sharp recovery of the currency price, and finally coupled with the reasons that some blockchains may have been upgraded to a higher level, Wu Jihan seized power and made a strong comeback. As for how it will develop in the future, let's wait and see.
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3. BCH
"In short, it's good for BCH, let's go!" Many investors became excited.
Investors who choose to invest in BCH, many of them are because BCH has the backbone of Bitmain. In the past year, it has been proved that Bitmain, whose surname is Zhan, will not help BCH. Only Bitmain, whose surname is Wu, is the "home" of BCH.
Tiger Sniff once mentioned the relationship between Bitmain and the BCH development team in a report:
"In December 2018, Bitmain was exposed to layoffs. Except for the mining machine department with good profitability, other departments were hardest hit. The layoffs also affected the BCH supported by Bitmain. It is reported that Bitmain is responsible for the development of BCH client" The "Copernicus Project Team" has all been laid off. The souls of it - "Two Jiang Brothers" Jiang Heping and Jiang Jiazhi have also left.
Bitcoin veterans commented on BCH, "This is a bottomless pit, no matter how much money Bitmain invests, it will not be enough."
According to the latest financial report released by Bitmain, the number of BCH held by the company has increased to 2 million, with an average cost of around $300. According to the current BCH circulation, Bitmain currently holds 11.2% of the BCH circulation.
In addition to Bitmain’s allies, we don’t know how many BCH will be in their hands, but saying that BCH is “decentralized” is basically not recognized by Bitcoin supporters.
But being able to discuss whether to decentralize is as happy as being able to discuss the consensus mechanism and the maturity of the technology. The current market is no longer willing to discuss with you these things that are not directly related to "pulling".
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4. The mine tyrant cannot return
During this period of time, the blockchain has been particularly popular in China. It has surpassed 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data and other technological concepts. When it comes to the central bank’s digital currency, it has fallen directly from the legend to the real world. When it comes to the stock market, there are six points One of the companies said that they have the concept of blockchain. But many people don’t know that the word blockchain actually first appeared in the first Chinese translation of the Bitcoin white paper, and the translator was Jihan Wu.
In fact, it is difficult to determine whether the blockchain has been characterized as a national strategic core technology a few days ago, and whether it will help Wu Jihan win the position in Bitmain. After all, no one would have thought that in the eyes of leaders a few days ago, artificial The blockchain, which is several orders of magnitude behind, has become the hottest concept, and artificial intelligence seems to have been forgotten by history.
Bitmain, which chose AI as the main direction, can be regarded as "reining in the precipice", and returning to the old business may be their best choice.
Li Xiaolai once said in an interview with "Interface":
"I think this person is a wounded and bloody warrior in the blockchain industry. About three years ago, I also told my friends about this. If there is an opponent in this world that I may not be able to beat, it is Wu Ji Han. It’s just that we don’t happen to be on the same track, so this is also my luck.”
Wu Jihan has always been considered a mining bully, although he may not be the man with the most "computing power" in China, he was even considered to have been eliminated from Bitmain before yesterday, and at the same time, Bitmain seems to have lost It has a dominant position in the mining machine market.
Although according to foreigners, the fact that the Chinese control a large amount of Bitcoin computing power still makes them very afraid, but obviously this is nothing more than wishful thinking. Bitcoin in all the "Chinese control" Coin mining has been running in a healthy, stable and efficient manner.
Although many people are speculating whether Bitmain will return to the position of mining tyrant after Wu Jihan retakes the helm, but it is clear that there is no such thing as a mining tyrant who can control the market in the current Bitcoin mining world, and the current mining machine The rivers and lakes are not the mining machine rivers and lakes of the past.
Not only has Bitmain lagged behind Canaan (officially listed in November) in the listing process, it also lags behind Whatsminer in the mining machine market, and it seems that the 7nm technology is also lagging behind Avalon in terms of technology research and development, and The largest mining pool is not the mining pool of Bitmain.
Times have changed, really.
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5. The beauty of computing power
In any case, this war where the outside world has almost no information and no smoke can be seen has come to an end. When the currency circle, which had already recovered in June this year, was full of reports about Matrix, a financial company that "looked like a PR article", a bigwig in the mining circle commented: "I basically haven't heard much about Wu Jihan. What exactly does this company do, and I believe Wu Jihan will not be satisfied with such a small company.”
Although the upheaval that was completely covered by gunpowder has temporarily ended with the applause of the people who eat melons, Bitmain still has a long way to go. Wu Jihan has already stated that AI will not be abandoned by Bitmain, although the main direction of efforts is still to return to the blockchain immediately.
