Bitmain CEO Jihan Wu categorically denied that the mining equipment manufacturer is secretly using its newly developed devices before making them available to the general public.
Wu made this statement in an interview with Fortune, complaining about rumors and reporting that after developing an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) minor for a new hash algorithm, Bitmain will secretly exploit these devices for several months before putting the new product line to sell.
"No, it never happened, we have a small test, we do not do that, it's not our strategy."
Earlier this year, suspicions that the Chinese firm was using its hardware before publishing it were confirmed when the monero cryptocurrency activated a fork to alter its Cryptonight extraction algorithm and prevent the new Bitmain Cryptonight ASICs from being used on its network.
After the spur, a significant portion of the hash continued to extract the old channel, and observers agreed that most of this hashrate came from Bitmain's Cryptonight ASICs, which had not yet been released. shipped to the public.
However, Wu said that Bitmain does not have the time, resources or incentive to operate a shadow extraction operation.
"There is a kind of group of people who have controlled the majority of the Monero hash rate for a long time, and I would like to say that developing such a type of ASIC is not a kind of secret skill that only Bitmain has Many people can do it, and for big companies like Bitmain, and especially myself, I do not even have the time, the attention or the resources to have such a plan to do it. , we release it and sell it on the market.Just after we have working sample machinery, we start sales to the market.We do not have that kind of advantages. "
As reported by CCN, Wu, increasingly enigmatic, has become increasingly available for interviews in recent weeks, a change that has occurred since the company began considering an IPO at Hong Kong or the United States. The company has estimated $ 12 billion internally, but some analysts believe that its real value could be closer to $ 9 billion based on its turnover.