Recently reviewing the development history of the crypto industry, I found a story of a particular figure that is especially worth paying attention to—Wu Jihan. From graduating from Peking University in 2009 and entering the venture capital scene, to investing 900 BTC in 2011, and then founding Bitmain to become a mining hardware giant, this process took only about 8 years, and his wealth quickly soared into the hundreds of millions.

I noticed that Wu Jihan’s success was not due to luck. He studied both Economics and Psychology at Peking University, immersing himself in the world of monetary theory during college. When he first encountered Bitcoin in 2011, this guy analyzed BTC’s logic and technology with his professional venture capital perspective, then decisively invested 100k yuan to buy 900 BTC. At that time, it was a real gamble, but two years later, when BTC rose to $750, that money became his first pot of gold for entrepreneurship.

In 2013, Wu Jihan co-founded Blockbit with engineer Chang Jian—China’s first Chinese-language BTC forum. Even more interesting, he translated Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper, which remains the most widely circulated Chinese version to this day. At that time, he had already realized a key issue: mining chip technology is the power center of the BTC world. Whoever can make mining hardware, will continuously mine BTC.

This insight led Wu Jihan to decide to do it himself. In 2013, he co-founded Bitmain with Jankun Zhang, who came from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In November, the first Antminer S1 was launched, followed by iterative upgrades of S2, S3, S5, and S7. Bitmain quickly became the world’s largest manufacturer of mining hardware. By 2017, its revenue reached $2.5 billion, and Wu Jihan was named one of the ten most influential people in blockchain by Coindesk.

But a turning point came. In May 2017, BTC broke through $2,000, and the network started to congest, with transaction fees soaring. Wu Jihan believed that blockchain scaling was necessary, but the Bitcoin Core team firmly opposed, advocating for second-layer solutions outside of BTC. The two sides couldn’t agree, and Wu Jihan ultimately decided on a hard fork—expanding the block size from 1MB to 8MB.

On August 1, 2017, BCH was officially born. Antpool immediately enabled mining switchovers for BTC and BCH, causing a large amount of hash power to flow into BCH. This decision earned Wu Jihan a complete reputation hit in the BTC community—some called him “Satoshi’s traitor,” and others punned his name “Jihan” into “JIHAD.” Coindesk outright labeled him as a “villain.”

Starting in the second half of 2018, the price of cryptocurrencies plummeted, and competitors flooded in, severely damaging Bitmain’s mining business. Wu Jihan and Jankun Zhang’s strategic disagreements also surfaced—one wanted to focus on finance and blockchain, the other on developing AI chips. By 2019, the company faced a funding gap of $300 million, leading to the well-known “internal conflict,” which eventually ended with their reconciliation and Wu Jihan’s departure.

In January 2021, Wu Jihan officially founded Bit Deer Group. This time, he focused on blockchain infrastructure. On April 14, 2023, it went public on NASDAQ, with a total market value of about $870 million. In contrast, BCH, after losing Wu Jihan’s support, has not performed well and has become a second- or third-tier old coin.

Honestly, how to evaluate Wu Jihan depends on your perspective. But it’s undeniable that from starting from scratch to founding Bitmain, and then seeing Bit Deer go public, his execution and strategic vision are truly impressive. Although the BCH story is somewhat regretful, his contributions to mining efficiency and the promotion of blockchain industry are real. Interestingly, now BTC is at about $70.96k, and BCH at $422.40—both chains’ stories are still unfolding.