The ex-Bitmain chip designer taking on the cryptocurrency mining giant

At Yang Zuoxing’s modest office a short drive from the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, desks are strewn with cryptocurrency mining equipment and cots stand ready for engineers too exhausted to go home after marathon days at work.

This is Yang’s bunker as he fights an uphill battle against Bitmain Technologies — his old employer and the world’s dominant provider of crypto mining chips — that may include an initial public offering for Yang’s two-year-old startup as soon as next year.

Yang says he helped Bitmain design its market-leading technology but left the company in June 2016 after co-founders Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan turned down his request for a stake in the business. Yang started his own crypto chip company, MicroBT, a month later. He now claims his firm’s mining gear is just as good, if not better, than Bitmain’s.

“We compete in every area,” Yang, 45, said in an interview.

His company is the latest to challenge Bitmain’s dominance in the…