Chinese police arrested ex-employee of mining giant Bitmain

Chinese police arrested former Bitmain employee Yang Zuoxing, now head of MicroBT, whichproduces WhatsMiner bitcoin miners. It is reported by The Block with reference to the publication BlockBeats.

According to informed sources, among whichChinese miners and exchanges, Young was detained due to a violation of Bitmain's intellectual property rights. He was among the engineers developing the top models of ASIC miners for Bitmain. However, in June 2016, Young left the company after its founders Cihan Wu and Mikri Zhang refused to share.

Shortly after leaving Bitmain, Young foundedMicroBT, which was the subject of a lawsuit initiated by Wu and Zhang. However, according to Bloomberg, the Chinese court ultimately withdrew the Bitmain patent, because "the developments in question were already used quite widely."

Initially, Bitmain demanded $ 26 billion in compensation for patent infringement from MicroBT (~ $ 3.7 billion), but later the claim was reduced to $ 380 thousand.

Despite ongoing judicialDuring the trial, MicroBT at one time managed to attract funds from a number of individual investors for $ 22 million. Also, negotiations were held with Chinese institutional players about additional financing. Moreover, MicroBT was about to conduct an initial public offering (IPO), thus competing with Canaan Inc. and Ebang, who also intend to enter the stock market.

Recall the other day, Mikri Zhang threatened a war to his opponents at Bitmain, promising to use legal tools to return to the company.