Chinese officials are continuing to tighten down on cryptocurrency mining, with local Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs being shut down in Sichuan province.
Authorities in Ya’an City, a township metropolitan area in Sichuan province’s southwestern part, have ordered local Bitcoin mining businesses to shut down for investigation, according to the Chinese financial website Sina Finance.
The Sichuan Ya’an Energy Bureau and the Sichuan Ya’an Science and Technology Bureau met and agreed to clean up and rectify Bitcoin mining operations in Ya’an. Sichuan Ya’an has enacted a “one size fits all” policy for mines, requiring that all mines be shut down by the 25th, including the use of energy and hydropower abandonment.
People from the Yunnan Provincial Energy Bureau confirmed on June 12 that they had organized various power-using departments to conduct joint inspections promptly following the notice’s requirements and that they had completed the clean-up and rectification of Bitcoin mining companies’ electricity consumption by the end of June this year.
The recent decision, according to Chinese crypto blogger Colin Wu, will have an impact on significant Bitcoin mining farms in Sichuan, China’s largest hydropower producer. According to Wu, Sichuan issued a document directing electricity providers to halt supplying power to any virtual currency mining activities immediately.
The document, as per Wu, highlighted 26 significant mining operations that needed to be evaluated and shut down. According to him, the most recent shift will mostly affect huge mining farms:
There are many small and medium-sized hydropower stations in Yunnan, Sichuan, and it may be difficult for them to receive government supervision. However, large-scale projects will be shut down in the short term.
On June 2, the National Energy Administration’s Sichuan Regulatory Office conducted a research conference on virtual currency “mining,” but no conclusion was reached. Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Yunnan are the four provinces that have recently developed regulations for virtual currency mining. Sichuan is now the only major Bitcoin mining province in China that has not yet implemented the supervision.
Jiang Zhuoer, founder of influential mining pool BTC.Top, said earlier this week that “only hydropower mining farms in Sichuan are left.”
In Sichuan, bitcoin mining is done with hydropower, a clean and renewable energy source. The majority of hydropower utilized by mining industries comes from “park power” in the Sichuan Hydropower Consumption Industry Demonstration Zone.
While in Ya’an it comes from the Ya’an Hydropower Consumption Industry Demonstration Zone. The processing power used for Bitcoin mining in Sichuan accounts for around 10% of the overall computing power used for Bitcoin mining.
Following crackdowns in other provinces, many Bitcoin miners relocated to Sichuan, where they could make use of the region’s abundance of renewable energy.
Also Read: Bitcoin suffers as Weibo suspends crypto-related accounts
New to Crypto? Enroll in Cryptocurrency Course at Todayq Education