Bitmain's employee salary expenditure increased 11 times in the first half of the year, and many media confirmed layoffs

According to CoinDesk, sources and Bitmain employees have confirmed that the world's largest mining machine manufacturer has begun layoffs before the end of the year, and the layoff rate may exceed 50%.

Information shows that Bitmain's employee size has grown rapidly since the second half of 2017. In the second half of 2017, employee salary expenses reached US$800 million, 12.6 times the US$64 million in the first half of the year. In the first half of this year, employee salary expenses reached US$780 million, an increase of 11 times over the same period last year.

As of the first half of this year, Bitmain has a total of about 2,600 employees, including 840 R&D personnel and about 700 production management personnel. Earlier, an anonymous post appeared on the workplace social networking site Maimai last week saying that Bitmain had a large-scale layoff. The anonymous user said in the follow-up post that the artificial intelligence business department was the hardest hit by layoffs. Bitmain previously responded that this was a normal personnel adjustment at the end of the year.