Chinese cryptocurrency mining company Bitmain has been struggling mightily over the last couple of months; bad investments, rising competition and leaving CEO’s have been among the main defining characteristics of the project throughout this time frame. News dropped today that misery will be getting company as well, since Bitmain decided to shut down their overseas office in Amsterdam.
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The closure of the Amsterdam office comes after it became public knowledge that Bitmain closed a similar establishment in Israel at the turn of the year. Amsterdam office is apparently still operational but the process of shutting everything down has begun, claimed a Bitmain spokesperson in a statement shared with CoinDesk.
“As we build a long-term, sustainable and scalable business, we are making adjustments to our staff and operations. This includes the decision to close our Amsterdam and Israel offices,” the spokesperson added.
Overall it’s been a rather rocky December/January for Bitmain, as sources revealed that the company concluded the year with losses of over $1 billion. Besides the abovementioned remote offices going down, Bitmain’s restructuring efforts included liquidations of a $500 million mining operation in Texas, US, as well as a similar Washington state-located facility. With news that Jihan Wu, infamous CEO of Bitmain, and his second in command Micree Zhan, are looking to step down from all their positions at the company, it seems like the crypto mining industry is poised to see its biggest player dethroned and replaced.
What does this mean for bitcoin?
Bitcoin is not reliant on a single entity or individual and that is where its strength lies. It is a leaderless ecosystem that hums forward regardless of support or lack thereof of anyone. Bitmain is and was a long time dominant force in the space, producing ASIC miners and controlling big chunks of hashrate. However, bad managerial decisions and siding with a hostile bitcoin fork appear to have led it to the brink of an irrelevance, which is a terrible thing for Bitmain itself but a complete non-event for bitcoin.
