Crypto Mining Giant Bitmain Completed Employee Stock Options Plan, Its U.S IPO Is Approaching
Chinese cryptocurrency mining giant Bitmain has completed signing the contracts of employee stock options with its employees in late June, prepared for the company’s approaching U.S. IPO.
According to a report from local financial news outlet Jiemie, citing people with knowledge of the matter, Bitmain has recently signed the employee stock options contracts with the majority of its employees.
“It was previously said that only the employees who joined Bitmain before October 2015 and some core miner developers could have the options. But this time, all the employees who had been with the company by early 2018 with certain titles would be granted options. That means, almost all the employees would be given the company’s options,” said the source.
Bitmain declined to comment on the news, according to the report.
The move comes after Bloomberg reported that Bitmain had resumed its IPO plan and set to file listing documents with the United States Security and Exchange Commission in July.
Last September, Bitmain sought to go public in Hong Kong, but faced major headwinds and ultimately let its filing lapse this March. Bitcoin prices plunged by 60 percent throughout 2018, and bitcoin mining machines encounter poor sales, which resulted in heavy losses to the world’s largest manufacturer for bitcoin miners and the failure of its listing plan.
According to the source, as bitcoin gains its momentum in price this year, Bitmain’s revenue in the first half of this year has made up for its last year losses. As its website shows, all of the company’s bitcoin miners have currently been out of stock.
The IPO plan is being led by Bitmain’s chairman Micree Zhan, and Jihan Wu is no longer involved in the company’s decision making, the person continued.
“The two has broken up peacefully due to strong differences over whether to develop the AI chip business. At present, Zhan is in fully charge of the company, and Wu serves as a board director but no longer has a vote on the board.”
Last month, it was reported that Jihan Wu, the ex-Bitmain CEO, was gearing up to launch his new venture Matrix with some of his core staff, which will be a cryptocurrency custody and trading firm. Bitmain has invested in Wu’s new company.
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