Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer Bitmain pauses employee salary payments: Report

Bitcoin application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturer Bitmain has paused employee salary payments for September and beyond.

According to recent local news reports, citing multiple Bitmain employees familiar with the matter, the firm has allegedly cut all “bonuses and incentivizes” for its staff and still has not paid remuneration due since last month. In addition, employees face a 50% cut to their base salary. A message allegedly from Bitmain reads: 

“For the month of September, the company has yet to achieve a net positive cash flow, especially in the orders of [new] ASICs. The Executive Management Team therefore decided that salaries for the month of September will be paused, to be reviewed after October 7 after the holiday.”

Founded in Beijing, China, in 2013, Bitmain is one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining ASIC manufacturers, with an estimated 70% market share during its peak. The firm’s Antminer ASIC series currently leads the industry in terms of hash rate computations for mining Bitcoin.

In August, Bitcoin miner Hive announced the purchase of 2,000 Bitmain S19 XP ASIC miners for immediate deployment in its rigs. The S19XP ASIC miners have a listed price of $4,653 on Bitmain. Hive says that after its integrations, the firm’s mining rigs will generate a combined $80 per megawatt hour in revenue, including both old and non-Bitmain models. 

In 2021, Jihan Wu, co-founder of Bitmain, announced the settlement of a year-long ownership dispute with co-founder Micree Zhan. Under the agreement, Wu would resign as chairman and CEO of Bitmain, and sell his ownership stake to Zhan for $600 million. At the time, Bitmain planned for an initial public offering at a $5 billion valuation by late-2022. Such plans are believed to have been shelved due to the ongoing bear market.

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