Bitcoin miners in China compete again, despite ban

Despite the government ban in June 2021, China has returned to the position of the second largest Bitcoin mining country in the world.

China has returned to the position of the second largest Bitcoin mining country in the world despite a government ban on this activity in 2021. Meanwhile, the US continues to hold the number 1 position.

Specifically, according to statistics between September 2021 and January 2022 from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF), the hash rate: the computing power of the Bitcoin network has fluctuated wildly. Following the ban on Bitcoin mining in June 2021, the hashrate in China plummeted to zero in the following two months.

However, by September 2021, this rate suddenly increased to 30.47 terahash/sec, making China the second largest region in the world, accounting for 22.29% of the total market. Although the hash rate in the country fluctuates slightly, as of the end of January 2022, China is still a major Bitcoin mining hub at 21.11%.

Meanwhile, also according to CCAF data, the US remains the top Bitcoin mining country in the world with 37.84% of the global hashrate over the same time period. The national hash rate also recovered to new highs after falling in 2021.

Before that, China used to be the largest Bitcoin mining country in the world with a hash rate of over 75% in 2019. Until 2021, the Chinese government took a tough stance against Bitcoin miners, considering this operation to be a waste. of energy.

According to a Bloomberg assessment, after the 2021 ban, China’s hash rate rise shows that the country’s miners continue to operate “underground” despite the ban.

“This shows that underground miners are operating in China, confirming the assumptions of industry experts,” CCAF wrote in the report.

The return of miners to underground mining may be to blame for this increase. Another possibility is that the CCAF number is incorrect, as country hashes are aggregated based on location data provided by mining pools. So if miners use a VPN to hide their real location, the stats are also skewed.

According to Bloomberg, the above errors appear because many miners have circumvented the law by hiding their IP addresses or changing their location to another country using a virtual private network (VPN) service. Some people even use their own network on hydroelectric dams to bypass the government.

In addition to China, some places like Kosovo, Kazakhstan or Iran are also reinforcing Bitcoin mining operations. According to CCAF data, Kazakhstan currently ranks third in the world in Bitcoin mining with 13.22% of the total market, followed by Canada with 6.48% and Russia with 4.66%.