The co-founder of Bitmain Technologies, Micree Zhan, has filed a summons in the Cayman Islands to try and wrest back control of his company after an ouster, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The battle is for one of the biggest cryptocurrency miners in the world. Zhan filed the notice under the Great Simplicity Investment Corporation, which he owns. It was filed in December and asks the court to undo a decision that saw him lose voting control in Bitmain.
Zhan lost voting control in November at a general meeting, when shareholders voted to convert the company’s Class B shares to only one vote per share, whereas they were worth 10 before. That vote cost Zhan all of his influence.
The conflict with Zhan has been ongoing, and he lost his titles in Bitmain in October. Now, Chief Executive Officer Wu Jihan is in charge of the company, and he’s been hosting events and trying to move forward from Zhan’s ouster by showing off sales initiatives and trying to get more clients.
Zhan has fought the ouster vigorously, and he said in November that he was going to come back to the company and “restore order” and that “If someone wants war, we’ll give them war.”
Zhan had almost 4 million B shares, which is almost 50 percent more than Wu.
The battle comes at an inconvenient time for Bitmain, as it has to deal with competition from smaller companies nipping at its heels, like MicroBT. Bitmain was valued at $15 billion during a recent private funding round, and was looking into a U.S. listing last year after a failed one in Hong Kong, but it didn’t happen.
The two men were both acting as CEOs until Zhan hired Wang Haichao, but then the Bitcoin crash caused layoffs and other issues. However, Haichao is still with the company.
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