Bitmain Technologies, the leading manufacturer of crypto mining hardware, has reportedly made some key changes to the makeup of its board of directors.

The most notable adjustment, which occurred last week, is the company changing Bitmain co-founder Jian Wu’s official designation and role from director to “supervisor”, according to Chinese news outlet Sanyan Blockchain.

Jihan Wu May Not Vote On Business Decisions

Tian Yangang, a legal representative at Beijing-based Lvli law firm, said:

After changing to a supervisor, there is no voting right, so one’s power is smaller and one cannot participate in the business decision-making of the enterprise.

Bitmain’s personnel adjustment came on November 7th. Former Bitmain Technologies board members Zhao Yifeng, Ge Yuesheng, and Zhou Feng have reportedly all stepped down from their positions.

Former supervisor and director at Bitmain, Hu Yishuo, has also left the company’s board. Meanwhile, Zhan Ketuan, the firm’s legal specialist, has been appointed as executive director and manager. Ketuan’s previous designation was chairman and manager.

With a 20.25 percent share in Bitmain, Wu’s net worth has been estimated at over $2 billion while Zhan Ketuan’s net worth is about $4 billion as he has a larger 36 percent stake in the firm.

According to unconfirmed reports from 8btc, Bitmain’s primary legal entity is Bitmain Technology Holdings Limited – while the personnel adjustments only apply to one of Bitmain Technology’s wholly-owned subsidiaries.

As Bitmain is preparing for an IPO, a securities authority working closely with Bitmain said the process typically requires that companies make changes to their board of directors – in order comply with listing regulations. Moreover, 8btc wrote: “The board adjustment is only a simplification of the structure of its wholly owned subsidiary.”

Bitmain Files For IPO

As CryptoGlobe reported in late September, Bitmain had filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK). The mining giant had also released its prospectus which revealed the firm’s profit and revenue statements from financial year (FY) 2016, 2017, and the first half of 2018.

Although Bitmain’s financial figures appeared to show that the company had made sizable profits during Q1 and Q2 of 2018, many analysts alleged that the firm had intentionally combined its earnings and reported them under H1 2018.

Critics claimed that Bitmain had a rough second quarter and that it had reported its cryptocurrency holdings at cost, and not at the the market price – which was considerably lower.

Notably, the changes to Bitmain’s board members have come shortly after the mining hardware manufacturer introduced its new bitcoin (BTC) miner, the Antminer S15. The S15 model may also be used to mine any other cryptocurrency that uses the SHA256 hashing algorithm.

Antpool Curiously Stops Mining SegWit Blocks

Antpool, one of the largest bitcoin cash (BCH) mining pools, had recently stopped mining blocks that supported SegWit. This was surprising as the mining giant was actually losing revenue by not mining SegWit blocks.

Twitter user @_opreturn commented (on October 30th): “AntPool no longer includes SegWit txs in Bitcoin (BTC) blocks. If there are enough non-SW transactions to fill up Core’s 1MB base blocks and they pay higher fees than the SW transactions, why should he be charitable?”

BitMEX research also commented on the situation: