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Debarati Ghosh
Dec 16, 2019
by Debarati Ghosh

Founder and CEO of MicroBT reportedly arrested for embezzlement

MicroBT

Table of contents

  1. Previous cases
  2. The ongoing rivalry
Yang Zuoxing, the current founder and Chief Executive Officer of MicroBT has reportedly been arrested for embezzlement. On the 12th of December in Shenzhen, China Shenzhen Nanshan District Prosecutor arrested him. On the prosecutors' official website, they stated the authorization of arresting a suspect named Yang *Zing. They omitted Yangs' full name from the website to protect his anonymity.

Previous cases

Business publication Caixin mentioned in its report that the person arrested is definitely the founder and CEO of MicroBT. Some previous reports mention that in early November police took away Yang. Supposedly, the main reason was to assist an investigation over possible IP disputes. MicroBT has been in serious rivalry with Bitmain. And assumingly, the police took away Yang after Jihan Wu, co-founder, Bitmain regained control of the firm by ousting his rival co-founder and chairman Micree Zhan.

Though the reason behind his arrest is still unclear. And both the firms MicroBT and Bitmain refused to comment on this matter.

The ongoing rivalry

Yang was a top processor designer in Bitmain until 2016. He was in charge of developing the firms’ flagship AntMiner S7 and S9 models. He asked for a stake in the business. This is when the founders Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan reportedly refused this and Yang left the firm. Yang went on and founded MicroBT and its Whatsminer 20 series of mining rigs became the best seller models in the industry. On the other hand, Bitmain made a profit of $1 Billion in 2017 and a profit of $1 Billion first half of 2018 by selling the models developed by Yang.

Bitmain also brought up a civil case against Yang and MicroBT in 2017 for infringing a patent. Reportedly, Bitmain was granted that patent for bitcoin mining equipment. In 2018, Yang and the team successfully appealed to the intellectual property court of China to revoke Bitmain’s patent and the case got dismissed.

Last week MicroBT launched its latest WhiteMiner M30 product which features a computing power at 88 tera hashes per second. Some anonymous sources have reported that MicroBT is currently in

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Founder and CEO of MicroBT reportedly arrested for embezzlement
Debarati Ghosh
Debarati is a finance MBA who is a keen observer of the current crypto currency market. She likes to read and write about the game changer and industry transforming news of the market.

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