Micree Zhan Net Worth, Crypto and NFT Investments

Micree Zhan is one of the earliest proponents of crypto. He ventured into the industry by establishing Bitmain, a well-known Bitcoin mining firm. The massive rise in Bitcoin adoption and usage soared the revenue of Bitmain, thereby boosting the net worth of Micree Zhan. In February 2019, Bloomberg ranked Zhan ninth among the world’s richest self-made billionaires below 40.

Then, the net worth of Micree Zhan was estimated to be around $5.2 billion. Also, the Bloomberg Billionaire Index listed the Bitmain co-founder as the world’s 311th richest person in the world. The publication estimated the net worth of Micree Zhan to be around $5.42 billion in 2019. However, Zhan’s wealth has regressed owing to the dip in the value of Bitcoin and mining returns. 

Meanwhile, he was embroiled in a fierce leadership tussle with his fellow Bitmain co-founder, Jihan, and other executives. In 2019, he initiated two different lawsuits to protest his removal from the company. Ultimately, in early 2021, the lawsuits came to an end following an agreement between the duo. 

Micree Zhan’s Net Worth Since 2019

Early Life

Micree Zhan was born on 29 January 1979, in Minhou County, Fujian, China. He attended Minhou No. 1 High School, before proceeding to Shandong University. There, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering in 2001. Later, he moved to the Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2004, he graduated from the institution, earning a master’s degree in microelectronics engineering.

Shortly after the completion of the program, he secured employment with the Technology Research Institute at Tsinghua University. While at the institute, he worked as an engineer. Later, he had short stints with Microsoft, IBM, and a host of tech companies as a software engineer. 

Finally, Zhan resolved to start a business and founded DivaIP, a startup that allowed users to stream television to a computer screen via a set-top box. While running his company, he met Jihan Wu on the streets of Beijing. Then, Jihan was a financial analyst and private equity fund manager with a growing interest in cryptocurrency. After meeting Jihan, the duo had long discussions about establishing a new company. 

Bitmain

Consequently, in 2013, Zhan and Jihan founded Bitmain. The company designs and manufactures ASIC chips for cryptocurrency mining. With Bitmain, Zhan and Jihan aimed to tap into the growing attention on cryptocurrency. The main focus of the company is to be at the forefront of the crypto mining market. It kickstarted its journey in the mining sector by launching the Antminer S1. The product is an ASIC Bitcoin miner that produces 180 gigahashes per second (GH/s). It consumes 80-200 watts of electricity.

The establishment began to attain huge prosperity owing to the huge interest in crypto mining by corporate and individual investors. At a time, it became the world’s largest application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip producer for Bitcoin mining. Through the company, Zhan established two mining pools; BTC.com and Antpool. 

In 2017, the revenue of Bitmain hit a huge feat of $2.5 billion. A year later, its valuation rose to $12 billion. In the first half of the year, the company recorded a net profit of $742.7 million. Reports also indicated that as of 2018, Zhan owns about 36% of Bitmain with 20% belonging to Jihan. The massive growth in the company’s valuation spiked the net worth of Jihan and Micree Zhan. 

In the second quarter of 2018, unsold mined cryptocurrencies in the treasury of Bitmain was worth $1 billion. Likewise, the firm also had about 11 mining active farms in China. Despite enjoying landmark success within the year, Bitmain surprisingly reduced its 3,000 workforce by 50%. The company said the decision was part of its “personnel optimization plan.”

Later that year, Bitmain’s co-founder, Jihan revealed the firm’s plan to go public. He disclosed that the company took the decision so that its early investors could cash out. The following month, Bitmain concluded its $1 billion pre-IPO registration with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Thereafter, it filed for IPO with the Hong Kong regulatory agency on September 26, 2018. 

Unfortunately, Bitmain’s application for IPO expired, thereby forcing the firm to give up on its plans to go public. The plummet in prices of crypto assets as well as the leadership tussle in the firm contributed to the setback. Later, the company halted operations in Israel and the Netherlands. Likewise, it heavily downsized its mining operations in Texas. Occasioned by the bear market at that time, several media reports claimed the firm lost “about $500 million” in the third quarter of 2018. However, Bitmain dismissed the reports.  

Meanwhile, amid the tussle over the control of Bitmain, Zhan and Jihan stepped down from their positions as co-CEOs. Nevertheless, the duo continued to oversee the day-to-day running of the crypto mining company until late 2018. Then, Jihan successfully ousted Zhan from Bitmain, thereby worsening the leadership crisis in the firm.

The brawl impacted the performance of Bitmain, thereby paving the way for its closest rival MicroBT to gain a huge market share. Also, in 2020, the company received a host of negative reviews from customers regarding its Antminer S17. Customers complained that some units of the Antminer S17 had issues. 

Meanwhile, around June 2021, Bitmain suspended spot delivery of sales of machines globally. Then, the company made the move in response to Beijing’s crackdown on crypto at that time.

Lawsuits

Around 2015, Bitmain sued a Bitcoin trading platform in Hong Kong. In the lawsuit, the crypto mining company accused the platform of negligence after it allegedly failed to address its security issues. The security issues, according to Bitmain, led to the loss of its virtual assets and therefore demanded compensation. However, an investigation later revealed that the complaint against the platform lacked substance. It was revealed that Bitmain became vulnerable to the loss because its employee used an insecure private network while carrying out a transaction on the platform. 

Also, findings indicated that the employee left the auto-fill function on and used software that had been blacklisted by the government. Driven by these revelations, the court ordered Bitmain to pay the legal fees of the Bitcoin trading platform. Likewise, Bitmain was also made to pay some amount of money as compensation to the firm. 

Two years later, the firm was also involved in another legal tussle. Then, it sued Zuoxing Yang, a former Bitmain employee who left the company to establish another firm that offers similar services. In 2018, the appeal by the legal team of the former employee was successful as the court granted their request to revoke its patent. Consequently, the court dismissed Bitmain’s complaint against Yang. 

Likewise, Zhan and Jihan also engaged in a fierce legal battle over the control of Bitmain. The brawl between the two co-founders could be traced to 2019 after Zhan was successfully ousted by Jihan. Jihan made a public statement to confirm Zhan’s exit from the firm. He said Zhan would no longer be the official representative of the company. 

Also, Jihan threatened to fire any member of staff who took directives from Zhan. He declared himself as the savior of the company, stressing that he made the move to “save the ship.” In a separate announcement, Bitmain confirmed the dismissal of Zhan from the company. The firm emphasized the initial words of Jihan, stating that “Zhan should be disregarded as he no longer shares any relationship with the company.”

During this period, Zhan was the highest shareholder in Bitmain. In a disclosure, he referred to his ousting as illegal and therefore initiated two different lawsuits against Jihan and the company. First, in January 2020, he filed a lawsuit against the shareholders of Bitmain to regain his position and voting power in the firm. In the lawsuit, he argued that the shareholders attempted to reduce his influence in Bitmain by slashing the ten votes per share standard to one vote. 

Two months later, Zhan filed another lawsuit in Fujian province to regain his position as the CEO of the company. In May 2020, local reports in Beijing stated that Zhan was attacked by a masked mob. The mob attempted to steal the business license of the company’s major subsidiary from him. There were speculations that Luyao Liu,  Bitmain’s chief financial officer, led the mob. Eventually, Lui was reportedly nabbed in connection to the ambush.

In June 2020, amidst the controversy, Zhan reportedly established a new account and website for Bitmain. His power tussle with Jihan was eventually settled in 2021 after a court ordered the duo to split the company’s assets among themselves. Consequently, Jihan stepped down as the CEO and Chairman of the company. 

Regarding the settlement between Bitmain’s two co-founders

Resilio Sync key: BEHPKSVC4IHNZ7YXP2K5TAVZYVYUAO57E

— Jihan Wu (@JihanWu) January 26, 2021

The settlement allowed Zhan to buy out the shares of Jihan and some of his supporters. In a bid to acquire the shares, he was forced to obtain a $400 million loan from the crypto-mining company. Likewise, Jihan took over the BTC.com mining pool and several other mining facilities belonging to Bitmain. Meanwhile, Zhan took control of Antpool mining pool and Bitmain’s China-based mining farms. The settlement also positioned him as the controller of Bitmain’s artificial intelligence (AI) division. 

Is Micree Zhan Pro Crypto?

Zhan might not be popular, but his contributions to the development of Bitcoin and blockchain tech have been significant. He was one of the first individuals to pick an interest in crypto. His passion for Bitcoin is driven by its potential to foster decentralization and provide a transparent financial system. In a recent interview, Zhan reflected on how he got to know about Bitcoin. 

He said; “I am an electronics engineer and before co-founding Bitmain, I ran a startup that was also related to [integrated circuit] design. In 2013, Jihan introduced Bitcoin to me and, after spending about two hours to understand its basic idea, I knew it was the right thing to do.”

Zhan’s confidence in the future of Bitcoin encouraged him to co-found Bitmain in 2013. Then, the largest crypto by market cap was still struggling for mainstream popularity and adoption. His partner, Jihan was the first individual to translate Nakamoto’s white paper into Chinese. Zhan saw a promising future ahead of Bitcoin and therefore decided to venture into it. He banked on his vast experience and proficiency in technology development to develop ASIC chips that could mine Bitcoin, thereby bringing Bitmain to life. Today, the Bitcoin miner owns the largest crypto mining pools across the globe. One of its pools, BTC.com, has made mining simpler and more efficient.

However, despite his tremendous contributions to the development of Bitcoin mining, Zhan has continued to keep a low profile. Unlike Jihan, he does not like to be at the center of attention in the industry. This explains why he is not as popular as other early Bitcoin investors like Changpeng Zhao and Elon Musk. However, amid the leadership tussle that ravaged his company in recent years, he began to make headlines alongside his partner, Jihan. The brawl positioned him for heavy media attention. 

Since then, numerous publications have featured Zhan in their interviews. For instance, around 2020, he was interviewed about Bitcoin Unlimited (BU), Segregated Witness (SW), and many more. There, the Bitmain co-founder spoke in favor of BU over SW, stressing that the latter has some complexities. His position was that BU offers another Bitcoin protocol implementation code, thereby aiding the consensus and value of the ecosystem. 

“We know that Bitcoin block size is reaching its 1M limit, and many proposals were introduced to remove this limit. BU’s emergent consensus is one of these good solutions. So far, emergent consensus is getting more and more support in the community. I believe emergent consensus is easier and more feasible than SW and that many miners will activate it. I believe Bitcoin users should support BU too because BU provides another Bitcoin protocol implementation code. The basic consensus and value of Bitcoin is its unique ledger, not the unique code from Core.”

A Look Inside One of the World's Biggest Bitcoin Mines https://t.co/rA7TdKtUoO 来自 @YahooFinance

— Micree Zhan (@MicreeZ) August 23, 2017

Similarly, the Bitmain co-founder also shared his perspective on the proposal to increase the block size limit on Bitcoin at that time. Then, the proposal recommended the usage of extended blocks to facilitate the limit increase. Zhan described the usage of extended blocks as a solution to scale the block size as a great suggestion but stressed that “many such solutions have lost support and, I think, it is often not because of any technical issues with these solutions.”

Zhan sees Bitcoin as a great and complicated technology, comprising users, miners, exchange protocols, developers and many others with different interests. He agrees with Satoshi’s original idea that miners must derive economic benefit for their mining efforts. According to him, miners invest huge financial and other resources into mining operations and thus deserve the reward. Therefore, he argues that they can select “SW or BU based on their interest i.e. to increase the block size, to make Bitcoin more popular, to get more transaction fees.”

Crypto and NFT Holdings of Micree Zhan

Micree Zhan is reported to be the largest holder of Bitcoin. He started acquiring Bitcoin in 2013 and has not sold any of his holdings to date. Although the Bitmain co-founder has yet to publicly reveal the aggregate worth of his crypto portfolio, several publications have already ranked him as one of the wealthiest crypto investors across the globe.

Around 2018, Micree Zhan was named the richest crypto entrepreneur on Hurun’s inaugural blockchain rich list, with over $4.3 billion net worth. A year later, Bloomberg ranked him ninth on its list of self-made billionaires. Therefore, there’s no doubt that the billionaire has made sumptuous fortunes from his Bitcoin mining business and personal crypto portfolio. 

However, there are no indications that Zhan holds NFTs. He has yet to speak about his stance on the digital asset. 

Crypto and NFT Projects Featuring Micree Zhan

In spite of his impressive contributions to crypto mining, Zhan has not been featured in any project. This is no surprise, considering his decision to maintain a low profile since venturing into the crypto space. Nevertheless, he might still get the attention of a few projects, like Wall Street Memes if he sustains his activeness in the industry.

Wall Street Memes has become an empire of all kinds of Internet memes. The project took inspiration from the Wall Street Bets movement, leveraging memes to mock the rigid traditional financial system and promote emerging innovations in the crypto world. It combines every element of Internet culture, satire, and financial technologies in all its memes. 

Bro thought robbing a day trader was a good idea pic.twitter.com/a40CJcXbAj

— Wall Street Memes (@wallstmemes) August 27, 2023

With these elements, every meme relayed by Wall Street Memes has continued to stand out, attracting a large number of followers to its handles. Likewise, the project’s recent conversations with Elon Musk and Jim Cramer have successfully positioned it for widespread recognition on social media. This feat, coupled with the enormous activities of its vast community has laid a strong foundation for $WSM to thrive. 

$WSM is described as the creative representation of the ravaging Wall Street Memes movement on social media. The team allocated 50% to early investors, 30% to community incentives, and the remaining 20% to CEX and DEX liquidity. Without any doubt, the 30% allocation to incentives allows members of the community to enjoy enticing airdrops from the team. 

Notably, $WSM is the biggest sensation in the crypto space right now, courtesy of the heavy interest greeting its ongoing presale. The team has confirmed its readiness to ensure multiple CEX listings for the token by September. With this, $WSM might be the next cryptocurrency to flourish in the volatile market.

You can read more about the meme coin when you visit wallstmemes.com.

Micree Zhan’s Net Worth – Our Verdict

Zhan is a billionaire due to his huge shares in Bitmain and personal crypto investments. He is regarded as one of the foremost crypto advocates whose contributions to Bitcoin mining can never be overestimated. Despite his huge wealth, Zhan is not as popular as other successful entrepreneurs in the industry. He loves to live a private life and has been inactive on Twitter since 2022. 

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