TL;DR: The world’s largest cryptocurrency mining and hardware company, Bitmain, recently brought its Crypto Mining Forum world tour to Santa Clara, California. CoinSpice caught with Bitmain’s International Marketing Manager Nathaniel Justin Yu for an exclusive interview about the forum, the recently launched Matrixport financial services, the industry’s first accreditation course for miner maintenance, and new products in the Antminer 17 series.

Bitmain World Tour Unveils Matrixport Financial Services, Training Academy, New Products

Bitmain has come through a tough 2018, absorbing about as much of the Crypto Winter market-wide downturn as any company. Its stature within the ecosystem and very public industry leadership position meant that it felt that bump mightily: layoffs, restructuring, and even an IPO listing postponed.

The company, however, hasn’t seemed to slow. Instead it took to the road, starting last year actually, bringing its offerings and services directly to the community in the form of a free conference-like setting, the Crypto Mining Forum (CMF). Its fourth stop brought the CMF to Northern California, within a stone’s throw of famed Silicon Valley and home to many top cryptocurrency companies and investors.

Attendees were given a chance to rub elbows with the likes of Bill Zhu, Managing Director of Marketing, Sales & Service, who discussed Bitmain’s new mining ecosystem. Panel discussions drilled-down on topics such as finance and mining optimization sharing, along with contests and networking opportunities. Speakers also included the company’s regional directors, sales directors, customer service managers, and more. CoinSpice found Bitmain’s Nathaniel Justin Yu, and asked him about the CMF and future specifics from the industry player.

Interview with Bitmain’s Nathaniel Justin Yu on the Mining Giant’s Latest Products and Services

CoinSpice: What is the purpose of the Crypto Mining Forum?

Bitmain’s Nathaniel Justin Yu: The main purpose of the Crypto Mining Forum is to create a platform for sharing resources, networking, investment opportunities, and updating customers of Bitmain’s new products and roadmap, so as to create a sense of unique identity among customers. CMF will provide attendees the opportunity to speak and share their ideas, start partnerships, and discover new resources from Bitmain and other participants.

This appears to be 4th in a series. Why choose those particular parts of the world?

We have large customer bases in those countries, and we want to serve them better, as well as to let them have more information and knowledge. Those countries also have great potential to develop the cryptocurrency industry.

Why is mining so important?

Mining is the backbone of this industry. It helps keep the system fair, secure and stable, while providing security and confirm Bitcoin transactions.

Bitmain refers to California as part of the North Central South America (NCSA) region. What is the Antminer brand’s strategy for NCSA?

We have developed a focused ecosystem for mining. We will be providing new services to further enhance the experience of our current and future customers. It is our goal to provide the best standards. We have developed 4 points to greatly enhance the services that we provide.

Product Purchasing – Incorporating pre-order agreements and purchase agreements from our standard purchasing process. For this point, we developed new purchasing models for our customers to have a better experience in availing for miners. This would allow customers to plan and adjust for future price fluctuations.

Aftersales Service – Developing the Ant Training Academy (ATA) and more repair centers. As for repair centers, we plan to have more strategic locations globally in order to provide better services for our customers, greatly reducing the downtime of miners.

Mining Farm Evaluation System – Authorization by Bitmain on mining farms to do hosting services. For this point, we plan on providing an evaluation system for mining farms where Bitmain can help connect miners for co-hosting. This will provide more opportunities for mining farms across the globe and will be able to connect miners from other locations, supporting the overall ecosystem of the mining industry.

Matrixport Financial Solutions – The three main pillars of Matrixport business are trading, lending and custody – miners could take Matrixport as a one-stop-shop to fulfill all their crypto financial needs – be it liquidating/hedging their coin holding, getting loans or safeguarding their crypto assets.

Tell us about the latest in Bitmain mining hardware.

The Antminer 17 series include the Antminer S17 Pro, Antminer S17, and Antminer T17. All three miners come equipped with the new 2nd generation 7nm BM1397 mining chips, which come with improvements to power efficiency and hashrate.

Antminer S9 SE and Antminer S9k is also one of our latest miners that were recently launched. This miner is the legacy taking after our popular Antminer S9 that was launched in 2016. A new design structure was introduced for the S9 Special Edition (SE) and the S9k, achieving an enhanced performance whilst limiting power consumption.

What are some new Bitmain solutions?

We established an academy, Ant Training Academy, to share the insights and techniques that keep Antminers operating for as long as possible. This is the industry’s first accreditation course for miner maintenance, also part of a commitment to pursuing sustainable ways to mine cryptocurrency, and developing innovations that serve customers throughout the product’s lifetime – not just at the selling point. ATA’s Maintenance Training Course is designed to educate maintenance personnel for mining farms on how to install, operate, and repair mining equipment. The course runs for a two-week period in Shenzhen, China.

And we’ve updated our business model: now we have pre-order & purchase agreement methods, which give customers more options and relieve financial stress.

The idea of financial services to expand mining operations looks very interesting. Tell us more about Matrixport Financial Services.

To elaborate more on this, we provide financial services to miners. Founded in February 2019, Matrixport is a company which can offer its financial services which benefits miners through trading, lending, and custody. Miners could take Matrixport as an one-stop-shop to fulfill all their crypto financial needs, from liquidating/hedging their coin holdings, getting loans or safeguarding their crypto assets.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.

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