Bitcoin ASIC manufacturing giant – Bitmain – has reportedly fired four of its employees who leaked salary information and cited the “illegal publication of the company’s announcement on salary release” as the reason behind the move.

It emphasized its “Management Standards for External Information Disclosure” once again in the notification, underscoring the requirement that employees should refrain from sharing any company information with external parties without proper authorization.

Bitmain’s Salary Leak Fallout

The latest development comes a week after certain Bitmain employees raised concerns about salary arrears due to cash flow issues, as per information obtained from the Maimai Community, China’s workplace networking site, on October 8th.

Additionally, they noted that the 2022 bonuses remained unpaid. It was also revealed that half of the base salary for all employees and performance-based wages could be withheld as a result of poor cash flow issues.

The message allegedly read,

“For the month of September, the company has yet to achieve a net positive cash flow, especially in the orders of (new) ASICs. The Executive Management Team therefore decided that salaries for the month of September will be paused, to be reviewed after October 7 after the holiday.”

Apart from issuing an internal disciplinary notice leading to the dismissal of employees who violated company policy by disclosing salary delay information on the social networking platform, Bitmain also reported the incident to the educational institutions where the interns involved in the matter are enrolled, hinting at potential legal consequences.

Investment in Core Scientific

Bitmain has yet to publicly comment on the development, but the company made a significant investment of $53.9 million in Core Scientific to support mining operations in September.

As part of the purchase agreement, Bitmain will provide the latter with 27,000 Bitmain S19J XP 151 TH bitcoin mining servers. In exchange, Bitmain will receive $23.1 million in cash and $53.9 million in Core Scientific common stock.

The company also recently unveiled its newest mining device, the S21 Antminer series.