Meet The Crypto Billionaire Who No One Has Heard Of

Chinese cryptocurrency mining chip firm Bitmain has been in the news due to its upcoming IPO. While one of his confounders, Jihan Wu, has been more in the limelight due to his social media presence, the other, Micree Zhan has kept a much lower profile. Zhan, however, has a bigger stake in the company (36.58%) than Wu who holds 20.5% of the company. The company is confident to receive $14 billion market capitalization once they go through IPO. This would increase the worth of Zhan to $5.1 billion and that of Wu to $2.9 billion. Bitmain derives its revenue from semiconductors but a portion also comes from its mining pools like BTC.com and Antpool.

Despite being the technical backbone of the company, not much is known about Zhan. Let's take a brief look of his journey.

After completing his graduation and post-graduation in electrical fields, he went to work with Tsinghua University as a research and development engineer. When he started his first startup in 2010, he met Wu while canvassing the streets of Beijing. In 2013, Wu approached Zhan to cofound Bitmain together. And four year later, they stand together with a company that has $2.5 billion in revenue. The company is now hoping to complete their IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange before the end of the year.

By: Neha Maheshwari

Content: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasmineteng/2018/08/28/meet-the-little-known-billionaire-co-founder-of-chinese-crypto-firm-bitmain-micree-zhan/#3d3edb46234d