Why do so many people support Wu Jihan?

On October 29, the "palace co-operation drama" of the two co-founders of Bitmain revealed the big news of this "most expensive company in the blockchain".

All of a sudden, the two brothers who shed tears and supported each other at last year's annual meeting changed overnight. Wu Jihan became the "returning king" and Zhan Ketuan became the "fallen devil."

The two former brothers turned against each other, and Wu Jihan, who took advantage of Zhan Ketuan's business trip to "seize power", was controversial, but also smooth sailing. We can't help but ask, who is supporting Wu Jihan and why?

Unlike Steve Jobs, Wu Jihan's path to the top was not "compliant"

This move was indeed an unconventional one. In the eyes of many people, Wu Jihan's process of "seizing power" was neither legal nor reasonable.

According to the prospectus disclosed by Bitmain in September last year, Zhan Ketuan holds 36% of the group's Class B shares (high voting rights shares), while Wu Jihan holds 20.25% of Class B shares. Therefore, Zhan Ketuan has a total of 59.6% of the company's voting rights, which is an absolute advantage.

In addition, before the "coup", Zhan Ketuan was also the chairman of the Cayman company (the entity applying for listing in Hong Kong) and the executive director of Beijing Bitmain, while Wu Jihan was only a director of the Cayman company and a supervisor of Beijing Bitmain. In terms of voting rights and administrative power, it would be difficult for Wu Jihan to complete this "usurpation of the throne".

Moreover, after "usurping the throne", Wu Jihan's totalitarian regulations prohibiting employees from contacting Zhan Ketuan or even executing his orders did not seem to be the result of democratic consultation.

What is unreasonable is that, as an outsider on Zhihu said, Wu Jihan's approach is not necessarily good for the company.

"Conflicts between company founders are common. In the event of a serious and irreconcilable conflict, either one party will voluntarily withdraw and the other party will provide sufficient compensation, or the two parties will split and transform into two companies with little business connection. But in any case, for the sake of the company's reputation, both parties will show the company's stability and unity to the outside world and negotiate a solution. But Wu's approach is too radical."

The answerer added: "It's like a wife kicking her husband out of the house and changing the locks while he's away on a business trip, then spreading the news on WeChat Moments that her husband has been unilaterally divorced and that she will be the head of the family from now on, and threatening the children that anyone who talks to their father won't be allowed to enter the house. The husband hasn't said anything yet. At least in terms of temperament and the degree of care for 'family', Zhan is better."

Is Jihan Wu the biggest worry for Bitmain?

Of course, as the soul figure who made Bitmain big, Wu Jihan would not "not care" about the life and death of the company. The reason why it came to this point may be, as ViaBTC founder Yang Haipo said, Bitmain has reached the "most critical moment", and Wu Jihan can only seize power with an iron fist and "come back to save this company."

This sentence contains a lot of information. The internal and external troubles that Bitmain is currently facing seem to be more serious than we thought. If it is as stated by Tencent News "Qianwang", the biggest worry is Zhan Ketuan.

Looking at the outside information now, Zhan Ketuan has committed these "four sins" since the bear market in 2018.

First, according to some employees, he has a weird and crazy personality. He is addicted to alcohol, Buddhism, Chinese medicine, and is obsessed with imitating Huawei and Ren Zhengfei. He has a tough personality, is not good at communication, and loves to curse. According to Coindesk, at the Bitmain staff meeting on the afternoon of October 29, Wu Jihan also said that Zhan Ketuan is obsessed with power and vanity.

"Someone in the company said that I manage the business and he (Zhan Ketuan) manages technology. I want to ask, between Zhan and me, who truly loves technology? Zhan doesn't love technology, he loves to satisfy his desire for power; he doesn't love technology, he loves vanity," Wu Jihan complained.

Second, poor management. Tencent News’ Qianwang disclosed that at a one-hour staff meeting of Bitmain on the afternoon of the 29th, Wu Jihan listed Zhan Ketuan’s poor management behaviors, such as the “second organizational structure adjustment of the year” implemented by Zhan Ketuan internally in August this year, which was the direct cause of this “coup”.

This adjustment was strongly advocated by Zhan Ketuan, and the company's strategic direction is also dominated by the artificial intelligence direction that Zhan Ketuan is responsible for. Many employees said that Zhan Ketuan transferred multiple departments to each other, and many old employees, even business leaders, were transferred to new departments and reported to their less experienced superiors, causing a large number of old employees to resign.

Third, we have invested heavily in AI, but the results have been mediocre so far.

"Zhan Ketuan spent a lot of money on AI and recruited many 'middle-aged people' who were eliminated by Huawei. He did a very bad job and has almost become a joke in our (AI) industry. Not to mention Nvidia and Huawei, they are three levels behind Cambrian, and their mining machine technology has been dragged down by competitors." A former employee of Bitmain's AI department complained on Zhihu.

Fourth, major decision-making errors. At the general meeting of Bitmain yesterday afternoon, Wu Jihan pointed out that the chip investment decision made by Zhan Ketuan in 2018 consumed a lot of manpower and material resources of the company, causing direct losses of US$1.5 billion.

Based on the above, many employees are resentful of "suffering from Zhan for a long time" and are eager for Wu Jihan to return.

Public opinion turns to Wu Jihan, but management challenges remain

Compared with Zhan Ketuan, Bitmain employees, insiders, etc. have a more positive evaluation of Wu Jihan, who "seized power".

"Wu Jihan has a good reputation in the company."

"Compared with Zhan Ketuan, Wu Jihan's handling is more popular and more acceptable to customers."

“Wu is more like the spiritual leader of Bitmain, with good logic.”

"Han is self-disciplined and shrewd. He delivered a fatal blow that was unexpected but reasonable."

These are comments about Wu Jihan from former and current employees that have appeared everywhere.

Externally, Wu Jihan is more popular than Zhan Ketuan who is immersed in R&D because of his translation of white papers and preaching of Bitcoin. Moreover, there are people in the BCH community who are building momentum and cheering for him.

Weibite founder Yang Haipo and Litebit founder Jiang Zhuoer are both important BCH mining pools.

After the news that Wu Jihan took over Bitmain again came out, BCH also quickly rose by 7%.

A BCH group member shouted, "A big supporter of BCH is back. Those who know the relationship have already bought in. Boss Wu has a big influence in the circle, and he always goes to all the events."

In the eyes of many BCH supporters, Wu Jihan believes in the expansion route and continues to contribute and preach for it, which undoubtedly makes him a "big leg" to the community.

Bitmain formed the "Copernicus" team in October 2017 to develop a new BCH client and Layer2 protocol. Before the layoffs at the end of December 2018, the team had expanded from 6 to more than 30 people, a feat that many decentralized project development teams can hardly achieve. In addition, Bitmain even issued meal cards in BCH, which can be said to have expanded the application scenarios of BCH.

So, will heavy investment in BCH be a long-term beneficial decision from the company level? From the perspective of listing and traditional capital markets, will Bitmain, which is already affected by the price of cryptocurrencies such as BTC, be accepted by the capital market if it invests too much manpower and financial resources in BCH? In fact, Wu Jihan has been more low-key in the BCH community recently, and has spent more time on Matrixport and other directions.

No matter how many people in the BCH community support Wu Jihan, the final decision-making power still lies with Bitmain's shareholders. Whether Wu Jihan's position is secure remains to be answered.

Many people attributed the split between Jihan Wu and Zhan to a dispute over the direction of their business. Jihan Wu wanted to develop new mining machines, invest heavily in BCH, and develop businesses based on coins. Zhan Ketuan, on the other hand, wanted to develop in the field of AI. However, Bitmain and Jihan Wu repeatedly responded that "Jihan also supports AI."

However, due to funding constraints, Bitmain is ultimately unable to expand its business too widely and still needs to choose a good focus, whether it is to bet heavily on AI, or to expand into finance, public chains and other ecosystems outside of mining, or to consolidate its main mining machine business. These are all answers that must be submitted in the future.

Although Wu Jihan is regarded as "a well-behaved person and has made great achievements in the circle", in the short term, he has to deal with the possible "counterattack" launched by Zhan Ketuan, reorganize the "morale", manage the already chaotic company, and prevent the listing process from being affected by a "coup"; in the long term, Wu Jihan also has to clarify the direction of the company's development.