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On August 4th, Hurun Report released the "2020 Hurun Global Unicorn List". There are 11 blockchain companies on the list, namely Ripple, Coinbase, Bitmain, Kraken, Binance, Circle Internet Financial, Block.One, Dfinity, Figure Technologies, BitFury, and Liquid Global.

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Bitmain's valuation dropped by 62.5%

Compared with last year, the rankings and valuations of Ripple and Binance have risen, while the rankings and valuations of 7 companies have declined to varying degrees, and the most severe drop is Bitmain.

Bitmain is now valued at RMB 30 billion, a drop of 62.5% compared to last year's RMB 80 billion, and is one of the five companies with the largest decline in valuation among the companies on the list.

Hurun said: "Bitmain's valuation has declined, mainly because the stock price performance of Canaan Zhizhi after its listing is average, and the valuation of the blockchain industry is under pressure."

Canaan Creative and Ebang International’s market performance lowered the industry’s valuation on the one hand, and it was the unstoppable “gong fight” that really consumed Bitmain.

In May, Wu Jihan's "grabbing" of the business license made headlines in various media; in June, Ketuan Zhan broke into the Beijing Bitmain office, forced the team of employees, and prevented the delivery of mining machines to customers; in July, a subsidiary of Bitmain Group About 10,000 mining machines hosted by the company at the Zhenglan Banner Mine in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region were illegally transferred. Recently, some media said that in order to compete for employees, Ketuan Zhan said that employees can get 1.5 times the salary, and Jihan Wu said that employees can get 2 times the salary in odd-numbered months.

Bitmain’s “Gongdou Sequel” can be released every once in a while, and serious internal friction has dragged down the company’s performance.

For the past three years, Bitmain has controlled most of the ASIC mining machine market. But at the end of last year, cryptocurrency research firm CoinShares pointed out that Bitmain may have lost 10% of its market share in 2019, a trend expected to continue in 2020. CoinShares believes this is the result of a poor strategic decision by the company.

With years of accumulation, Bitmain's position in the mining machine industry is still not to be underestimated, but the current Bitmain is no longer the Bitmain of the past. The employees of Bitmain also realized that Bitmain's current advantages are brand and technology, but if the two sides continue to stalemate, Bitmain will collapse.

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Listed mining companies Canaan and Ebang International were replaced

It is worth noting that Jianan Zhizhi and Ebang International, which were listed on the "2019 Hurun Global Unicorn List", did not make the list this year, and were replaced by Kraken and Figure Technologies, which made the list for the first time.

It is reported that Kraken is a Bitcoin exchange headquartered in San Francisco, and it is currently among the most active digital currency exchanges in the United States. Figure Technologies is a financial technology company headquartered in San Francisco, co-founded by Mike Cagney, founder of financial technology unicorn SoFi.

The final valuation of the companies on the list this time is 7 billion yuan, which shows that the valuation of Yibang International and Jianan Zhizhi is less than 7 billion yuan. Last year, Hurun Report gave Canaan Zhizhi and Yibang International the valuation The valuations are RMB 20 billion and RMB 10 billion respectively.

It is conservatively estimated that Canaan’s valuation has fallen by at least 65%.

On November 21, 2019, as Canaan CEO Zhang Nangeng rang the bell, Canaan officially listed on NASDAQ, becoming the "first mining machine stock" in the blockchain industry. The opening price on the day of issuance was US$12.6, a 40% increase from the IPO issue price of US$9. However, the listing did not continue the life of Canaan Yunzhi, but it was like a "death talisman".

Since the halving of Bitcoin on May 11, Canaan Zhizhi's shares listed on Nasdaq have been falling steadily, and even fell below $2 in June, creating a new low since its listing.

In March of this year, a Canaan shareholder formally filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that the company violated the U.S. Securities Act and accusing Canaan of filing an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). (IPO) application misled investors about the company's financial and operating conditions.

In addition, three US law firms intend to file a class action lawsuit against Canaan.

According to public media reports, Jianan Zhizhi tried to reduce prices in the first quarter of this year, which was about half of the average price reduction in 2019, but the company disclosed that it still lost $5.6 million. In addition to the decline in sales due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the company invested $24.5 million in the first quarter to cooperate with domestic chipmaker SMIC, resulting in monetary funds and their equivalents falling by 47.9% in the first quarter, down from $71 million at the end of last year.

In April this year, Canaan released its first unaudited profit report since its listing. The report pointed out that Jianan Zhizhi had a net loss of US$148.6 million in 2019, and its annual revenue was US$204.3 million. Its profitability has declined in the past three years.

In May, White Diamond Research, a research institution mainly shorting U.S. stocks, released a report stating that the profit of Canaan’s new generation mining machine AvalonMiner 1066Pro is lower than that of its competitor Bitmain’s mining machine s17e. Due to insufficient performance, it is currently "unprofitable" for miners.

At the beginning of July, a series of industrial and commercial changes in Canaan also sparked speculation about internal struggles in its company. Although the director Kong Jianping came out to refute the rumors, it did not stop outside speculation. Until recently, Canaan Technology officially announced the change of the board of directors.

The announcement shows that the terms of directors Kong Jianping and Sun Qifeng have expired on July 31, and the other three independent directors ZhangHong, YangXiaohu and LuoMei have also expired on August 1. The announcement stated that the outgoing directors will not continue to participate. elect a board of directors. Canaan Technology announced the appointment of four independent directors to the board of directors, effective August 1, namely Zhang Wenjun, Du Hongchao, Shu Zhitang and Zhang Yaping. So far, the "inner fighting" public opinion has subsided.

At the same time, the situation of Ebang International, which went public on June 26 this year, is not satisfactory.

According to the financial data disclosed in the prospectus of Ebang International, in 2019, the total revenue of Ebang International was US$109.1 million, a year-on-year decrease of 65.80%; the net loss was US$41.1 million, an increase of 2.48 times year-on-year. According to Ebang International's unaudited financial performance data for the first quarter of 2020, as of March 31, 2020, Ebang International's net loss reached US$2.5 million, compared with US$600,000 in the first quarter of 2019, and the loss continued. expand.

People in the industry generally believe that Ebang International is seeking to go public in a bleak market environment because it urgently needs financing to alleviate financial pressure, and there are also news that investors are eager to withdraw.

In 2019, Ebang International sold a total of 289,950 units of four types of mining machines. In contrast, although only three types of mining machines were sold in 2018, 415,900 units were sold, a sharp drop of 30% . At the same time, miners don't think highly of Ebang International's mining machines.

Faced with the failure of the mining machine market, Ebang International will use the money raised from the listing to expand the mine and establish an exchange, trying to make up for the loss by "quick money".

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conclusion

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Guo Xinghua, the chief blockchain expert of the China Economic Community, once said that the mining machine manufacturer itself has a relatively single business, and its income mainly depends on the virtual currency market situation, and its ability to bear risks is relatively weak. After the proof and proof of rights stage, coupled with the development of anti-ASIC chip algorithms, it will be a fatal blow to mining machine companies.