Micree Zhan or Zhan Ketuan (; born 29 January 1979) is a Chinese electronics engineer and businessman. He is the co-founder and CEO (with Wu Jihan) of

Bitmain Bitmain Technologies Ltd., is a privately held company, privately owned company headquartered in Beijing, China, that designs application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for bitcoin mining. History It was founded by Micree Zhan and Ji ...

, the world's largest computer chip company for

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

mining. In 2018, Hurun Report named him the richest cryptocurrency billionaire in the world. In 2019, Bloomberg ranked Zhan as the world's 9th richest self-made billionaire aged 40 or younger, with a net worth of US$5.2 billion.

Early life and education

Zhan Ketuan was born on 29 January 1979 in

Minhou County Minhou County (; in Fuzhounese, Foochow Romanized: ''Mìng-âu'', IPA: //) is a county in eastern Fujian Province, China. It is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Fuzhou, the provincial capital, and lies to the south and t ...

Fujian Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...

, China. After graduating from Minhou No. 1 High School, he entered

Shandong University Shandong University (; SDU) is a public university in Jinan, Shandong, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Clas ...

, where he earned a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering in 2001. He then earned his master's degree in microelectronics engineering from the Institute of Microelectronics,

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; ) is the national academy for natural sciences and the highest consultancy for science and technology of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's largest research organization, with 106 research i ...

in 2004.

Career

After earning his master's degree, Zhan worked as an engineer at the Information Technology Research Institute at

Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...

. He later started his own business making

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...

es for television. In 2013, Zhan met up with Wu Jihan, an enthusiast for

. After hours of discussion and research, Zhan agreed to start

with Wu. The company quickly grew into the world's largest computer chip company for

bitcoin mining The bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network with no central oversight; the blockchain technology, a public ledger that records all ...

, reporting US$2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. As of 2018, Zhan owns 36% of Bitmain, and Wu 20%. In Hurun Report's inaugural Blockchain Rich List 2018, Zhan was named the richest cryptocurrency entrepreneur in the world, with an estimated net worth of 29.5 billion yuan (US$4.3 billion), while Wu was ranked second. In February 2019, Bloomberg ranked Zhan as the world's 9th richest self-made billionaire aged 40 or younger, with a net worth of US$5.2 billion. As of June 2019, he is listed as the world's 311th richest person in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with $5.42 billion.

Personal life

As of 2019, Zhan is single and has no children. He lives in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zhan, Micree 1979 births Living people 21st-century Chinese businesspeople Billionaires from Fujian Businesspeople from Fuzhou Chinese chief executives Chinese electronics engineers Chinese technology company founders Engineers from Fujian People associated with Bitcoin Shandong University alumni Academic staff of Tsinghua University