China Makes a Comeback in Bitcoin Mining Despite Government Ban

While the US extended its leading position as the dominant location for Bitcoin mining, China has reemerged as the second-largest locale despite a government ban on the activity last year. From a report: The US accounted for 37.84% of global hashrate, a measure of computing power used to extract the digital currency, between September 2021 to January, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, in a report released on Tuesday. The hashrate, also responsible for securing the Bitcoin network, has made a strong comeback to new highs after falling last year.

Following the mining ban in China last year, the country has seen a sudden surge in activity through "covert mining operations" and has "re-emerged as a major mining hub" grabbing 21.11% of global hashrate, according to the CCAF. "This strongly suggests that significant underground mining activity has formed in the country, which empirically confirms what industry insiders have long been assuming," CCAF wrote in the report. In May (2021), Beijing intensified its efforts to curb the cryptocurrency market. It seems covert mining is still happening in China through routed through virtual private networks that make it appear the computers are operating in another country.

As it should be

[SysDaemon]

"This strongly suggests that significant underground mining activity"

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

Money is just an abstract measure of one's level of influence over other people. Since humans live in an ocean of other humans, influence over others is THEY way to advance one's lot in life. So, people will scramble over any and every way of getting more of that.

Crypto isn't going anywhere. As bad as it is, the fact is it has the power to motivate people to take action. That makes it valuable and so people will seek to obtain it. Making it illegal will just create black markets, as with any desired go

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Parasites always come back no matter how many times banned. For example, there is one always coming back on Slashdot despite being banned several times already.

Very dangerous since he manipulates the moderation system with his hundreds of sock-puppet accounts thus threatening the very foundation of the Slashdot website.

Cryptofeces Lepidoptera Creimerus infestation is a serious problem. Not only are they capable of reproducing asexually like amoebas, they can also lay eggs hermaphroditically in unexpected pl

Re:

[gweihir]

Actually, no. That is a secondary function only. The primary function of money is to make trades massively more effective by replacing goods-for-goods trades with good-for-money trades. And at that primary function fake currencies like crapcoins fail completely.

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

Our statements are not contradictory. My definition of money as an abstract representation of one's influence over others is precisely what makes it effective as a means of facilitating trade. I don't even think there is a primary/secondary distinction here, as the two perspectives on money are simply orthogonal to each other and both true.

This is a reason, however, why it is impossible to separate money from politics. We can give indigents the right to vote and we can make bribes illegal and so on...but

Re:

[gweihir]

Lets make that "possession of goods" => power => influence over people. Money just serves as a equivalent (under some conditions) to "goods" and is not required for the mechanism to work. Unfortunately, money also makes scaling to insane heights of personal possession possible and easy and that is a real design flaw.

Re:

[TractorBarry]

How's this not been modded funny ? Wish I had mod points today :)

Meanwhile in America

[jacks smirking reven]

Gas extractors and miners are setting up generators directly at sites to mine with gas pulled right from the wells. I would imagine similar things are happening in China.

This gas would have stayed in the ground if it wasn’t for bitcoin [thebulletin.org]

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

I imagine they are just stealing shit through corrupt connections, less visible.

First kill all the crypto bros

[TheMiddleRoad]

I'd take 100 ambulance chasers over one crypto bro. Fuck these scammers.

So US most stupid, China trying to catch up?

[gweihir]

Makes sense.

Lockdown Effect?

[Arzaboa]

If a large portion of China is locked down, and people can't make money, it seems like it wouldn't be far fetched that people would plug their rigs back in so they can at least make a few Yen.

Would be interesting to see if the data included the cities where this mining is occuring.

--
I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places. - Henny Youngman

Re:

[alvinrod]

Mining in a city at any kind of scale isn't likely to occur. Even if you can get the power, the cost premium for the space to put all of the mining hardware makes it less feasible. I suspect that a lot of Chinese miners doing it on the scale of containers just moved those to another country.

If you live anywhere with a cold winter and have electric heat, a mining rig is a great way to cover heating expenses. Even old hardware would recoup at least some of its cost.

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[Comrade Ogilvy]

The electric heat point is a good one.

My belief is these massive Chinese mining operations occurred by bribing the right politicians to get electricity at wholesale rates. If there is surplus power generation in a rural area, mining may look like a reasonable means of injecting extra economic activity in that region. At least until real factories need that power, I can see why officials would think it okay to look the other way.

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[Gavagai80]

There has never been a large portion of China locked down. Their lockdowns have been individual cities... millions of people, but that's still like 1% of China's population.

And that's the main reason China is the second largest locale, too: when there are 1.4 billion people in a country, that country is going to have among the most people doing nearly anything. The USA is doing nearly 10 times more bitcoin mining per capita.

So the price of a black market kidney should be dr

[dynamic_cast]

So the price of a black market kidney should be dropping soon then, yes?

I knew it, the "ban" was to drive the price down

[ayesnymous]

Now that Bitcoin is more than 50% down, China can revoke the ban and buy much cheaper.