Bitmain shareholders approve terms of Jihan Wu’s departure

The Bitmain shareholders’ meeting approved the settlement agreement resolving the dispute between the conflicting founders of the world’s largest ASIC-miner manufacturer. This was reported by Colin Wu, citing several investors.

Exclusive: Several investors told the reporter that the Bitmain shareholders meeting ended on the morning of December 28, and the settlement agreement was approved and will be implemented. It is expected that the Jihan and Micree will complete the settlement at the end of January pic.twitter.com/lgte6onBPa

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) December 28, 2020

Wu Jihan and Micree Zhang are expected to complete the settlement by the end of January 2021.

The founders’ feud intensified in November 2019, when Wu, with the backing of shareholders, removed Zhang from all posts in the company. The standoff continued throughout 2020, negatively affecting the company’s operations.

In late June the co-founders discussed settling the dispute but did not reach agreement.

On December 19 it was reported that Wu and Zhang entered into an agreement. Under its terms, the former will leave the company, receiving compensation of $600 million, the BTC.com pool with the BitDeer cloud platform and mining farms outside China.

State media reported that Micree Zhang has already temporarily pledged his shares to borrow $600 million from Bitmain to buy out Jihan Wu’s stake. According to documents Bitmain filed for its 2018 IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Zhang owns 36.5% of the shares, and Wu owns about 21%.

Colin Wu reported on December 26 that the main shareholder of Jihan Wu’s sales company had been transferred from the Singapore unit to the Beijing unit. In the journalist’s view, this provides evidence of preparations for a Bitmain split.

On December 25, the major shareholder of Jihan Wu’s sales company in his hometown of Chongqing was transferred from Singapore Bitmain to Beijing Bitmian. It shows that the Bitmain split is in progress. pic.twitter.com/TuHdOK8UAa

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) December 26, 2020

In November, Bitmain unveiled mining equipment of a new type geared toward large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations.

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