And the tragic Icarus-like story of Bitmain seems to be coming to the tragic end many have been speculating would come for the better part of the last year. Our friend BTCKING555, who has been providing good information about the unraveling of Bitmain since August of last year, is saying that investor lawsuits are on the way after Jihan Wu and crew flubbed their IPO. In reaction to completely ruining his business' chances of going public it looks like Jihan has fled his country and maybe his company.

You can run Jihan, but you can't hide from the redemption clauses in your contracts with investors! All joking aside, as I've said before, Bitmain is going to go down in the annals of Bitcoin history as a company with an immeasurable amount of potential to dominate that destroyed itself with ego and hubris. Bitcoin is a cruel, unforgiving bitch, and if you think throwing a bunch of money and hash power at her will force her to change, she and the market will swat you down like a fly.

Bitmain let its self-perceived "power over the Bitcoin network" get in the way of sound business logic. Their continued support of Bitcoin Cash, a chain Bitmain helped birth out of frustration stemming from the lack of control they have over the Bitcoin development process, has proved to be supremely unwise. In the process of trying to force Bitcoin Cash on a market that has rejected it, Bitmain has seen their best chip designers leave the company to design ASICs elsewhere, relationships with chip foundries destroyed as they left leased factory equipment unused due to not having newly designed chips to make, and their balance sheet dwindle with the price of BCH. What a god damn shame.

The nature of how early on we are in this game has caused some men to believe their perceived influence over this nascent market is much greater than it is in reality. We are in the top half of the first inning of this revolution. There will be many "big players" that come and go and some that stick around. Those who stick around will probably have some staying ability due to their understanding of their relative insignificance to Bitcoin's overall success.

Final thought...

I need to get back into yoga. Big fan of working on my breath.