Asian Tech Press -- Bitmain Technologies Ltd., China's biggest maker of cryptocurrency mining machines, announced on Monday that it has spun off the business of Antpool, an open access mining pool.
At Bitmain's semi-annual shareholder meeting on July 26, 2021, the company announced that it has completed the divestiture of Antpool.
The company said that all related legal matters were finalized on May 1, following shareholder approval in the first quarter, and that it is now in the process of organizing its business.
As of this writing, Antpool is in first place with 15,603.01 PH/s of real-time hashrate, according to the Bitcoin Mining Pools Hashrate Ranking.
Antpool will independently run mining pools and other operations overseas after receiving support from new shareholders.
Some media outlets have noted that this move appears to be in fulfillment of the previous "Zhan-Wu Settlement Agreement", a settlement between Bitmaiin's two co-founders Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan.
As of now, it has been exactly six months since the former Bitmain CEO and Chairman Jihan Wu issued an open letter on January 26, 2021, titled "Settlement Between Bitmain's Two Co-Founders". The letter stated that the disagreements between Wu and Zhan were finally resolved in an "amicable" and "constructive" manner.
In the letter, the two parties agreed that Bitmain will divest its mining pools and cloud mining business. BitDeer will be spun off from Bitmain, along with its U.S. and Norwegian mines. Wu will serve as Chairman of Bitmain, while Matt Kong will serve as CEO of Bitmain. And Antpool will be split into a separate company led by Zhan.
However, according to a Bitmain insider, "Bitmain has never released an announcement or confirmed the contents of the Agreement to the public, and I have not had access to exactly what kind of agreement was reached at that time.
“I don't think it's related to the Agreement, it's just a decision that Bitmain made this year. After the shareholders communicated and unanimously agreed, it was implemented, and all the legal related matters had been completed by May 1," the Bitmain insider said.
In response to the divestiture, the Bitmain insider expressed his personal opinion, "For Bitmain, divesting the mining pool business will allow the company to focus its business more on areas such as cryptocurrency mining chip technology. And for Antpool, there will be less constraints in the process of globalization."
