Photo/Shetuwang

Oct. 31 (NBD) -- "Bitmain's founder, chairman, legal representative and executive director Wu Jihan has decided to dismiss all roles of Micree Zhan (Zhan Ketuan) in the company," the world's largest Bitcoin miner confirmed on Wednesday when reached by National Business Daily (NBD). 

In an internal e-mail sent to all staff Tuesday, Wu wrote, "Any Bitmain employees shall no longer take any order from Zhan or attend any meeting held by Zhan. Bitmain may consider terminating employment contracts of those who violate this note based on the severity of the situation." 

According to an update posted on enterprise information provider Tianyancha on Monday, Wu has replaced Zhan as the legal representative and executive director of Bitmain. 

Noticeably, Zhan made an appearance as Bitmain's chairman at the press release for the company's third-generation artificial intelligence server SA5 in Shenzhen Sunday. NBD has tried calling Zhan several times but he didn't answer the calls. 

Reports emerged on Wednesday that Zhan has already started approaching lawyers aiming to bring a lawsuit against Bitmain, based on media outlet Tencent News.  

A week before the management reshuffle, a report by Tencent News claimed that Bitmain has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but the Bitcoin mining giant didn't reveal anything about this to NBD.

The move, if true, would be Bitmain's second IPO attempt. The company earlier planned for a listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange but the prospectus expired on March 26. A representative of the company said to NBD at that time that it would restart its IPO application at a right time in the future.

Back in 2013, Wu Jihan and Micree Zhan co-founded Bitmain and now the company has become the world's largest Bitcoin mining rig manufacturer with a focus on the development of ASIC chips for cryptocurrency mining and AI applications.

Bitmain boasted a considerable revenues increase from 2015 to the first half of 2018. According to its previous prospectus, Bitmain's revenues hiked to 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 from 137 million U.S. dollars in 2015. For the first six months of 2018, the company's revenues hit 2.8 billion U.S. dollars.

It is worth noting that based on the revenue for 2017, the company was the largest ASIC-based cryptocurrency mining hardware company around the globe with its market share reaching 74.5 percent.  

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn