Bitmain forced to shut down Israel operations due to cryptocurrency bear market

It appears the downturn of the cryptocurrency market is having a ripple effect (pun intended) on the industry. Numerous blockchain businesses have been forced to close down or lay off staff to survive – and the latest one is Bitmain.

The mining giant is the latest to be hit by the cryptocurrency bear market and is shutting down its Israel-based development center, Bitmaintech Israel, Globes Israel reports .

The development center was set up two years ago, and will close this week laying off its 23-people-strong staff in the process. Gadi Glikberg, head of Bitmaintech Israel and VP at Bitmain, will also be parting ways with the business, according to Globes.

Bitmain blames the recent drop in the price of Bitcoin and general bear market across the cryptocurrency industry for the closure. Indeed, Bitmain is hardly the only blockchain company that has had to fire employees in order to stay alive .

“The crypto market has undergone a shake-up in the past few months, which has forced Bitmain to examine its various activities around the globe and to refocus its business in accordance with he current situation,” Glikberg told Bitmain Israel employees today.

Bitmain is the world’s largest manufacturer of ASIC mining devices and runs a mining pool under the Antpool name. Earlier this year, it was building a $500 million mining farm in the middle of Texas due to open in 2019, we’ll have to wait and see if that pans out as planned.

It’s certainly a sign that the cryptocurrency bear market is impacting everyone. Welcome to the free market.

IOTA is going through a very messy public break-up with a former member

Fledgling blockchain developer IOTA Foundation has found itself entangled in yet another controversy.

In a Twitter post from earlier today, co-founder David Sønstebø accused former employee Per Lind of exploiting the brand for personal gains. He further claimed that Lind has never held a position in the foundation – and went as far as deeming him a “charlatan.”

What makes this statement particularly contradictory is that back in 2016, Sønstebø personally announced welcoming Lind to the IOTA Foundation in a Medium post published on its official company blog. The entry has since been taken down from Medium, but you can access an archived version here .

Lind occupied a role as a business developer during his time at IOTA, according to the announcement.

“ Per recognized IOTA’s unique potential after having witnessed the limitations of regular blockchain architecture in his professional life for the past years,” the post read. “He has already been of great value for the IOTA project by opening a lot of exciting doors to world leading institutions that are interested in utilizing IOTA in value streams and new business models.”

In fact, prior to calling Lind “the epitome of what’s wrong with [the blockchain and cryptocurrency] space” on Twitter, Sønstebø referred to him as “the epitome of a connector with a digital rolodex very few can match” in the same announcement post from two years ago.

“The IOTA Foundation welcome Per Lind and look forward to the exciting voyage we are embarking on together,” the announcement concluded.

Continuing his tirade against Lind, Sønstebø moved the conversation to the official IOTA channel on Discord. “We cannot allow this person to keep hurting the brand of IOTA,” he said.

“He has greatly hurt our reputation and brand by doing TV appearances where he is incoherent, rambling drunk at Hackatons in Asia, not delivering on random lies he makes up on the fly,” the co-founder added. “It was only now that his feet was finally held to the fire that we were able to obtain his legal information and can finally put an end to this year long nightmare.”

The other side of the story

For the record, Lind has vehemently denied all claims made by Sønstebø.

“ I’ve been involved [with IOTA] for over [two] years,” Lind told TNW over email. “Only claim that I have made is as one of the first members of the foundation, as published by David Sønstebø. My role was to find interesting projects I could pitch IOTA technology to and speaking at events.”

Despite Sønstebø’s claims, Lind maintains that he “never made any derogatory statements about IOTA.”

“His statement about me being bumbling and drunk at events is just a usual personal attack from them,” he commented. “On the contrary, most people I have dealt with, are backing me up on this.”

Asked if he is still an active member of IOTA, Lind said that he is unaware of being removed from his position. “ As far as I know erasing my congratulations for joining IOTA Foundation, does not remove me as a member,” he told us.

“ Please keep in mind that IOTA is an open source platform and IOTA Foundation is strictly not for profit, so anyone can use as long as they don’t break license.” Lind said. “I am doing my own IOTA things in Asia, Europe and India, which I very clearly state has nothing to do with IOTA Foundation.”

“As a free person in my part of the world, no one will ever tell me what to do,” he finished.

The backstory

The controversy between IOTA and Lind has persisted for several months now.

Indeed, co-founder Dominik Schiener addressed the issue on the IOTA Discord channel in January, insisting that Lind was no longer associated with the foundation.

Earlier in March, Sønstebø once again took to Discord to make it clear that IOTA no longer considers Lind part of its team. “It is true that Per Lind is not a member of the Foundation,” the co-founder stated.

“While transparency is key, and somethign we strive to enforce as much as possible, it is not respectful to the party being discussed to disclose why things transpired the way it did, as long as there is no foul play,” Sønstebø elaborated further. “It simply didn’t work out, and that’s it.”

“[Lind] is still clearly very dedicated to IOTA, given his focus on it, so let’s just lay this dead and not spread rumors.”

Judging from the latest exchange between Sønstebø and Lind though, the relationship has deteriorated significantly since then.

We have reached out to IOTA for further comment, but representatives were not available as of the time of publishing. We will update this piece accordingly should we hear back.

Bitcoin’s first block was mined 9 years ago today, the reward was 50BTC

It has been a wild run, but today marks precisely nine years since the cryptocurrency train took off: January 3, 2009 was the day when the Bitcoin blockchain network had its very first block mined – the primordial block #0 .

The first-ever transaction was timestamped at 6:15PM (server time) and yielded a mining reward of 50BTC, which is worth approximately $739,312 at the time of writing. It took another six days until the second block (#1) was mined on January 9, 2009.

Since then, the Bitcoin blockchain has mined well over half a million blocks. At the time of writing, #502349 is the last mined block.

Given how much the required electricity consumption for Bitcoin mining has jumped over the years , it is no surprise that – in comparison to #0 – the mining reward for a single block has dropped to 12.5BTC these days.

Still, this is worth a hell of a lot more today than 50BTC were back when it all started.

Back on October 31 last year, the cryptocurrency community similarly celebrated nine years since the ever-mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto released the quintessential crypto piece – a conceptual paper titled “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”

Since the birth of Bitcoin back in 2009, the cryptocurrency market has experienced tremendous growth, boasting more than 1,000 different digital currencies and a total market cap of $695 billion.

Bitcoin continues to be the leading cryptocurrency, with a staggering market share of $250 billion.