Ousted Bitmain co-founder Micree Zahn took to Weibo on Monday to speak out against a reported Bitmain “personnel optimization plan” which could purportedly see around 500 Bitmain workers dismissed by January 17. Chinese media broke the story last week citing inside sources at the bitcoin mining colossus, one of which claimed poor financial performance of the company’s AI arm was part of the reason for the winter slimming. Zahn maintains the reported plan is unreasonable, but Bitmain’s official response neither confirms nor denies the downsizing.
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Reported Dismissals
The reported layoffs, which would see about half of Bitmain’s staff out of work for the winter, are speculated to be resultant of the approaching bitcoin halving and also poor performance of the AI end of the company, where Zahn is said to have put much of his focus after co-founder Jihan Wu stepped down from his post early last year. In October, Wu famously returned and had Zahn removed. In his Weibo post Zahn maintains:
Compared to Bitmain’s profit, this cost is not large. Taking a step back, even if the profit is difficult, the company’s current capital and asset reserves, the annual expenditure of 500 million Yuan will be fully affordable.
The 500 million number is a figure Zahn uses hypothetically, estimating that each employee to be cut earns 1 million yuan (~$144,000) a year, and that the company can afford the cost.
Bitmain Responds
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