Jihan Wu

Jihan Wu was born in Chongqing, China, in 1986. He pursued higher education at Peking University, where he earned dual degrees in economics and psychology in 2009. His early career involved work as a financial analyst for a private equity firm. Wu’s entry into the cryptocurrency space began in May 2011 when he discovered Bitcoin. He invested 100,000 yuan, approximately $15,373 at the time, sourced from family and friends, to acquire 900 bitcoins. Demonstrating an early commitment to advocating for the technology, Wu was notably the first individual to translate Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper into Mandarin Chinese in late 2011. This period also saw him co-found Babite (巴比特) with Chang Jia, establishing China’s first Bitcoin community site.

Building on his interest and early investments in the burgeoning cryptocurrency sector, Wu invested in ASICMINER in 2012, one of the initial companies to produce application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) for Bitcoin mining. Although this venture produced significant returns initially, some subsequent investments faced challenges, including hardware issues from another mining company, Canaan Creative. Recognizing the critical need for technical expertise in the evolving mining landscape, Wu partnered with microelectronics engineer Micree Zhan in 2013 to co-found Bitmain. Under their leadership, Bitmain launched its first mining rig, Antminer S1, in November 2013. The company experienced a period of rapid growth, especially with the success of Antminer S5 in 2015, which became a leading mining equipment product as Bitcoin prices recovered. By 2017, Bitmain had developed into a significant global player in the computer chip industry for bitcoin mining, reporting revenues of $2.5 billion. Wu’s role in the industry also involved his advocacy for increasing Bitcoin’s transaction capacity, leading him to support the creation of Bitcoin Cash, a hard fork of Bitcoin, in August 2017.

Wu continued to expand his influence within the crypto sector beyond Bitmain. In 2019, he stepped down as co-CEO of Bitmain to establish Matrixport, a crypto financial services platform primarily based in Singapore, bypassing China’s cryptocurrency trading restrictions. The year 2021 marked a significant turning point when Wu formally departed Bitmain after resolving a leadership dispute with Micree Zhan. Following this, he became the chairman of Bitdeer Technologies Group, a cryptocurrency mining platform that subsequently spun off from Bitmain, along with the BTC.com mining pool. Bitdeer later purchased Le Freeport, a high-security vault in Singapore, in 2022 for S$40 million (US$28.4 million). His entrepreneurial endeavors have consistently placed him among the wealthiest individuals in the cryptocurrency space.