Bitmain
The Beijing ASIC maker co-founded by Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan, operator of Antpool and BTC.com, and a major Bitcoin Cash backer.
The wiki's angle: no company shows up in more fork-history documents. Bitmain's co-CEOs signed in Hong Kong, it was on the New York list, its pool mined the last common block before Bitcoin Cash, and it backed ABC in 2018.[2][3][4]
Company
Bitmain was founded in 2013 by Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu and is headquartered in Beijing[1]. Its first product, the Antminer S1, produced 180 gigahashes per second[1]. It also operates BTC.com and Antpool, historically two of the largest Bitcoin mining pools[1].
In the block size war
Both co-CEOs, Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan, signed the 2016 Hong Kong Roundtable statement[2]. Bitmain was a supporter of the 2017 New York Agreement and offered engineering support for its upgrades[3]. The last block shared by Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, 478,558, was mined by BTC.com[4].
Bitcoin Cash
Antpool sent 12% of the Bitcoin Cash it mined to irrecoverable addresses in an effort to support the price[1]. Bitmain sided with Bitcoin ABC, alongside Roger Ver, in the 2018 split[1]. In December 2018 it laid off about half of its 3,000 staff[1].
Heard on Bitcoin Takeover
Braiins' Kristian Csepcsar said on S17 E14 (March 2026): “It's very difficult to challenge the position of Bitmain.”[5]
References
- secondaryWikipedia, “Bitmain” [archived]
- primaryBitcoin Roundtable, “Bitcoin Roundtable Consensus”, Medium, 20 Feb 2016 (Wayback Machine copy)
- primaryDigital Currency Group, “Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017”, Medium, 23 May 2017 (Wayback Machine copy)
- btkBitcoin Cash: The Big Block Breakaway (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]
- episodeS17 E14: Kristian Csepcsar on Bitmain's market position▶ listen at 1:10:33timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]