Page 37 - Forbes - Asia (September 2018)

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University in 2009 with a dual degree in economics and
Jihan Wu is the public
psychology. According to his LinkedIn proile, he worked as
face of Bitmain, but his
an investment manager at private equity irm China Grand low-profile cofounder,
Prosperity Investment from 2010 to 2013 before he cofound- Micree Zhan, has a
ed Bitmain. A cofounder of 8BTC, a China-based Bitcoin much bigger stake.
forum launched in 2011, Wu is reportedly the irst person to
translate the bitcoin white paper—the original report written
by Satoshi Nakamoto that explained the fundamentals of
bitcoin—into Mandarin. He also drew attention to himself in
2016 when he tweeted a vitriolic response to someone who
criticized his support for Bitcoin Cash.
In 2013, Wu approached Zhan about founding Bitmain to-
gether. Wu sought Zhan’s expertise in chip design to develop
the mining chips needed for virtual currency mining. Mining
bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies requires brute force that
these ASIC chips provide, in order to solve the complex math
problems that verify transactions on a blockchain. he morn-
ing ater their meeting, Zhan spent two hours poring through
the Wikipedia page about bitcoin and promptly agreed to join known thus far. his could be a monumental step not just
the venture, Bloomberg reports. for Bitmain but also for the larger cryptocurrency commu-
Four years later, in 2017, Bitmain brought in $2.5 billion nity. he industry has been attempting to nudge its way back
in revenue, predominantly from sales of its cryptocurrency- into the spotlight ater a brief frenzy over cryptocurrencies
mining equipment, according to the investor decks. In the that began at the end of 2017. Ater the investor decks were
irst quarter of 2018 alone, Bitmain had $1.9 billion in rev- leaked, however, uncertainty over mining-rig sales in 2018
enue. he company hopes to complete its IPO on the Hong have raised doubts over the feasibility of a $14 billion-size
Kong Stock Exchange before the end of the year, but little is IPO. So watch this space. F
SEONGJOON CHO/BLOOMBERG (TOP)

SEPTEMBER 2018 FORBES ASIA | 35