The billionaire and mining overlord in the cryptocurrency circle mysteriously disappeared

self introduction

FriedCat, whose real name is Jiang Xinyu, was born in Shaoyang, Hunan in 1986. He is the earliest evangelist of Bitcoin in China and the second person in the world to build an ASIC mining machine. Like Wu Jihan, FriedCat was born in a family of others. In 2001, at the age of 15, FriedCat was admitted to the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China with the eleventh place in the country. After graduating from undergraduate studies, FriedCat obtained a master's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2009 with the thesis "Constructing a Secure Thread Mechanism with Formal Methods". Later in 2011, he went to Yale University in the United States to continue his studies and pursue a doctorate in computer systems. Yale University is among the most prestigious universities in the world. After all, it has produced 5 US presidents and 65 Nobel Prize winners. Judging from his resume, FriedCat's talent has surpassed that of most ordinary people. He can be said to be a child of destiny. Why did such a genius disappear mysteriously in the end?

A bond with BTC

Just like the heroes in martial arts movies, Friedcat also yearns for freedom and high self-awareness. It was in the summer of 2011 that Friedcat first encountered Bitcoin in the United States. The liberal ideas carried by Bitcoin coincided with Friedcat's self-awareness. Soon Friedcat began to indulge in Bitcoin, which was unknown at the time. He did not complete his doctorate and chose to take a leave of absence. Perhaps it was because of his yearning and love for the freedom conveyed by Bitcoin that Friedcat soon developed his first "mining machine" and became the second person in the world to build an ASIC mining machine. On January 16, 2012, he registered an ID "friedcat" on the official Bitcoin forum Bitcointalk, and "Friedcat" was born.

Genius entrepreneurship, reaching the peak

In 2012, FriedCat and David Fan (David, a classmate of USTC and one of the people who accompanied FriedCat on his legendary journey) and others came to Shenzhen to start a business with their dreams. On July 12 of the same year, David registered BitQuan Information Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen, officially kicking off the legendary journey of FriedCat. Since there was no Bitcoin mining machine on the market at that time, FriedCat posted a fundraising post on the forum, saying that he had the ability to develop ASIC mining machine chips and manufacture mining machines for mining, but he needed funds, so he conducted the first IPO public offering on the GLBSE exchange. The stock was named ASICMiner, and FriedCat's mining machine was named after it in the future. A total of 400,000 shares were issued in this IPO, with an initial unit price of 0.1BTC per share. 41% were sold to the outside world, and 59% were held by himself. The father of BCH also invested 1,000 bitcoins here and obtained 10,000 original shares. At that time, 1 million RMB was raised. In early 2013, Wang Song (David’s high school classmate, in charge of procurement, supply chain and mining factory) and Zhuang Zhong (responsible for code) joined them, David was responsible for product design, and FC was responsible for external financing. The four of them stayed in Shenzhen Maple Leaf Garden Apartment for half a year. FC also developed its first mining machine, a 12.8G mining machine. At that time, there were only two competitors of FC mining machines in the market, one was Butterfly Labs in the United States, and the other was Pumpkin Zhang’s Avalon Miner (Canaan Creative). The three companies, Butterfly Labs, Canaan Creative, and BitQuan, were then competing in a "who will make a high-capacity ASIC mining machine first" competition. Although Pumpkin Zhang’s results came out first, his strategy was to pre-sell mining machines and chips to the world, allowing coin friends to mine by themselves. After developing the chips, the FC team immediately entered the mass production of mining machines and carried out large-scale mining.

At 2:00 pm on February 18, the FriedCat mining machine produced the first Bitcoin block and received a reward of 50 blocks. The four immediately decided to withdraw from the mining pool and set up their own mines. In April, Wang Song signed the first science and technology park and began to deploy the FriedCat mines. In April of the same year, Pumpkin Zhang announced that he would no longer produce mining machines, but only chips, and Butterfly Labs was unable to produce mining machines. This can be said to be a blessing from heaven for FriedCat. Soon, FriedCat became the only company in the global ASIC mining machine market. The triumphant BitSpring happened to encounter 2013, which is known as the first year of Bitcoin. With the surge in its own stock price and the increase in Bitcoin itself, it brought unpredictable wealth to FriedCat itself and investors.

The business suffered setbacks and hit rock bottom.

As the market of FriedCat mining machine becomes bigger and bigger, the global Bitcoin mining farms have become the world of FriedCat alone. A big tree attracts the wind. BitQuen once caused panic and attacks in the currency circle because of its excessive computing power. Because of the characteristics of Bitcoin, a 51% computing power attack can cause the Bitcoin network to be hacked and the assets to be zero. Under pressure, FriedCat distributed part of the computing power and only maintained it at 20%, which temporarily calmed everyone's panic. As the saying goes, people are not good for a thousand days, and flowers are not red for a hundred days. This passionate time did not last long. In this field, R&D technology is the key to staying ahead. FriedCat encountered difficulties in the process of developing the second-generation chip, and the market competition has doubled than in the past. In addition to the old rival Pumpkin Zhang, there is also a new competitor Wu Jihan. Of course, the FriedCat mining machine, which once led with its technological advantages, encountered a bottleneck in the development of the second-generation chip and failed to be listed in time. It happened that many mining machine companies entered the market to divide the market at that time, and the departure of shareholder Wu Jihan was even worse. Wu Jihan once wanted to join the FriedCat team, but Fan Dawei disagreed. Later, he found Zhan Ketuan as a technical partner, and the two co-founded Bitmain, developed the Antminer, and became one of the strong competitors of FriedCat. By October 2013, the computing power of FriedCat's mining machine fell from 42% of the entire network at the beginning to 4%. The stock price also fell below the IPO public offering price. The three-foot-thick ice is not formed in a day. His decline was due to a series of events. If the story ended here, it would actually be an ordinary entrepreneurial failure. But why did FriedCat disappear from the world and disappear forever?

The last hope was shattered, and he mysteriously disappeared and disappeared

After hitting the bottom, this talented young man did not want to admit defeat and wanted to make a comeback. Later, through a friend's introduction, he met Lin Qingxin, a Fujian businessman (who claimed to be a shareholder of "Shuanghui" Group). Roasted Cat provided the mining machine and electricity fee, and Lin Qingxin invested in the site plus 40 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity. The two agreed and signed a contract to invest in Huai'an, which is rich in electricity resources, and built a mining farm with an area of ​​2,000 square meters, deploying seven or eight thousand mining machines. This is the last hope of Roasted Cat. It will happen when nothing unexpected happens. Due to various conflicts of interest between the two parties, the mining farm could not operate as planned due to the quality and packaging problems of the third-generation chips. On December 25, 2014, the partner changed the mining coin collection address to its own wallet address, hijacking the computing power. Roasted Cat went to Huai'an alone to negotiate, but due to the arrogance and unreasonableness, the negotiations between the two parties broke down, and they could not cooperate and could only breach the contract. According to the previously signed contract, Roasted Cat had to pay the other party a penalty of 80 million yuan. The investors' daily door-to-door inquiries also doubled the pressure on the Roasted Cat team. The BBQ team decided to give up Huai'an and go to Sweden to find a mine. Just when the flight tickets and visas were ready, BBQ suddenly disappeared. On the morning of January 23, 2015, BBQ held a two-day mining machine auction and announced the end at 8:03 am on January 25. On the bitcointalk forum, BBQ's last login IP was at 4:03 pm on January 25, 2015, Beijing time. This was also the last time BBQ appeared in the public eye. It disappeared immediately. Two years later, on July 29 and August 4, 2017, BBQ's Bitcoin wallet changed. There were five transfer records in his two wallet accounts, with a total of 17,597 bitcoins transferred out, which was worth 370 million yuan at the time, which was equivalent to the daily trading volume of China's Bitcoin Exchange at the time, which was quite amazing. There was no news about BBQ since then. In addition to the businessman surnamed Lin, who is one of the key figures, the other is Wang Xian, the wife of FriedCat. The two got married in Hefei in October 2014, and FriedCat disappeared in January 2015. Wang Xian sued the court and was sentenced to divorce in October of the same year. Various conspiracy theories have also appeared in recent years, such as the theory of sand, fraud, etc...But since we don’t know much about it and are not involved in the matter, we will not comment on it.

Industry leaders drive development.

As time goes by, we don’t know whether FriedCat has lived in seclusion in the mountains under an assumed name or has been assassinated. It is 2023, and the blockchain industry is booming and growing. We cannot forget the early industry predecessors like FriedCat, Wu Jihan, and Li Xiaolai. As early developers of mining machines and early Bitcoin miners, these early evangelists have made great contributions to our industry. It is precisely because of their persistence and love that the blockchain industry has been pushed to where it is today, and the industry is still growing.