At the World Digital Mining Summit in Frankfurt, Germany, Bitcoin.com’s CEO Stefan Rust sat down with Jihan Wu, cofounder of Bitmain Technologies and Matrixport. The two discussed how cryptocurrencies being used for payments is spreading and how Bitmain is doing after the bear market last year.
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A Virtual Economy at Work Approaching Critical Mass
The World Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) is a two-day mining conference that hosts an assembly of industry leaders, mining rig manufacturers, cryptocurrency pool operators, and other individuals passionate about crypto. During the event, Bitcoin.com’s CEO, Stefan Rust, had the privilege of sitting down with Bitmain cofounder Jihan Wu and discussed a wide variety of subjects. At first, Wu explained how he got into Bitcoin and that while working for an investment firm, he happened to read something about Bitcoin and found it “really interesting at that time.” After looking into it for two days straight he decided that bitcoin was a good idea. Wu was actually the first person to translate Satoshi’s Bitcoin white paper into Chinese for residents living in the region.
“I was the first one to translate the [white paper]. At that time in the Chinese media said Bitcoin was either a scam or it does not work,” Wu explained to Rust. “I happened to understand economics and some high-level principles of computer science so I knew [Bitcoin] works in both economic ways and in computer science ways. So I translated the white paper and tried to get more positive feedback from Chinese social media.”
While recalling his old QT wallet, Wu emphasized that it’s been an amazing journey. “I still remember back then no one knew about bitcoin and right now there are 20 million or 40 million users around the world and almost everyone now more or less have heard about bitcoin — I believe there are actual users getting involved in the cryptocurrency economy and those [individuals] are really starting to use cryptocurrencies for payments. A way to store their cash account — I believe this kind of user base will increase more and more.” Wu continued:
This is a virtual economy at work and it’s quite difficult in the beginning but I think we are almost near critical mass.
The Bitmain cofounder remarked that he believes the 40 million crypto users globally had initially stemmed from investor types, but nowadays he sees more ordinary people joining the economy and “especially young people.” “[Individuals] are really pushing cryptocurrency into the local payment network and people start to use it,” Wu said. Rust also brought up spending bitcoin cash (BCH) in Slovenia where there are hundreds of merchants that accept digital assets for products and services. “Lots of people still today believe [Bitcoin] is undoable or it’s out of their imagination how cryptocurrency can be really adopted by real life use cases,” Wu replied. “I think it’s a miracle, I think it’s amazing and lots of miracles are happening nowadays.”
Bitmain Continues to Produce Next Generation Mining Rigs and Chips
After discussing cryptocurrency adoption, Wu also explained how Bitmain was doing this year. “After the bottom of the bearish trend last year we’ve seen a very fast recovery in the money industry and we can see the hashrate growing very fast. Bitmain’s sales volume increased a lot and we released a new generation of mining rigs and mining chips.” Wu detailed that the company also released new artificial intelligence (AI) chips. He further explained that Bitmain’s mining pools mined different cryptocurrencies and remain top-ranking mining pools. Wu stressed:
It’s a good year for Bitmain.
Additionally, Rust and Wu talked about regulations in China and how roughly 60% of the world’s hashpower is located in the country. The two executives discussed the possibility of China banning bitcoin mining and how the Chinese government is dealing with oversight. The Bitmain cofounder and Bitcoin.com CEO conversed about a slew of other subjects like the ecological impact of bitcoin mining, the reward halving, and a lot more insights from someone who’s seen the cryptocurrency mining industry grow immensely, first hand. If you want to check out our exclusive interview with Bitmain’s Jihan Wu, check out the video below.
What do you think about Jihan Wu’s perspective of the mining industry and cryptocurrency ecosystem? Let us know what you think about the interview in the comments section below.
Image credits: Bitcoin.com.
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