Bitmain Leadership Crisis Deepens as Ousted Co-founder Threatens Legal Action

In the latest salvo in the ongoing saga surrounding Bitmain, ousted co-founder Micree Zhan is threatening to fight back claiming to have been betrayed by his partners. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin mining giant is moving ahead with plans to launch a U.S. IPO.

Bitmain Co-founder Threatens War

Dovey Wan, founding partner at Primitive and Chinese crypto news insider published a series of tweets on Thursday (November 7, 2019), detailing the latest developments in the Bitmain leadership saga.

As previously reported by BTCManager, Jihan Wu had taken over at Bitmain in a management upheaval that saw the dismissal of fellow co-founder Micree Zhan. Now, Zhan has come out in an open letter to present his side of the story.

Someone should really make a movie of out the #BitmainDrama Below are some highlighted part translated from Micree's open letter, and Jihan's response at the end

I feel really bad for Bitmain, such an ugly public fight is just cannibalistic

Ego is a person's worst enemy

— Dovey "Rug The Fiat" Wan (@DoveyWan) November 7, 2019

According to Zhan, the events that resulted in his removal was nothing less than a coup. The Bitmain co-founder termed the move a betrayal, likening it to being stabbed in the back.

Zhan declared that he wouldn’t take his removal lightly, declaring:

“Bitmain is our child, I will try my best to protect her. I will use the legal weapon and let all the setups and conspiracies that tries to hurt Bitmain fail miserably. If someone wants a war, let’s give them one. I firmly believe that justice will never stand on the side of the conspiracy and evils, no one will believe them.”

Commentators like Blockstream CEO Samson Mow earlier remarked that Zhan’s removal didn’t happen with the express backing of the shareholders. Zhan, himself is the largest Bitmain shareholder and also reportedly owns more than 1 million Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

A leadership tussle of this magnitude could also lead to another Bitcoin Cash civil war which might have devastating consequences for the price of the Bitcoin fork. A legal struggle between Wu and Zhan may also throw a spanner in the works of the company’s proposed U.S. IPO.

Zhan Predicts Bright Future for Bitmain

Moving away from the leadership turmoil, Zhan provided an optimistic outlook for Bitmain’s non-crypto mining activities. As part of the open letter, the Bitmain co-founder forecasted that the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) business could rake in more than 100 million yuan ($14.3 million) by the end of the year.

Zhan also predicted a 10-fold increase in this figure by 2020 while boasting that the company will regain its dominance of the crypto mining scene.