China’s Sichuan Asks Bitcoin Miners To Shutdown Operations

According to reports, Sichuan’s Ya’an municipal government has asked Bitcoin miners to shutdown operations in the city.

None of the three local sources available at the moment mention how long the crypto mines will remain closed.

Chinese crypto media outlet PANews says,

Officials from related authorities, including the city’s energy bureau and technology bureau, had a meeting and decided to crack down crypto mining operations

Citing an anonymous source, the news website reports that the meeting was held on Thursday.

The report further notes that the Bitcoin miners must also abandon all hydroelectricity consumption parks.

Sichuan Asks Power Generation Companies To Cut Power Supply To Mines

Colin “Wu” Blockchain, a Chinese journalist, also covered the event. He states the following:

On June 18, Sichuan officially issued a document requesting power generation companies are required to immediately stop supplying power to any virtual currency mining, and report the relevant situation on the 25th

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The journalist further adds:

The document identified 26 large mining projects and required to be monitored and shut down. At present, the hashrate of Bitcoin and Ethereum has not fluctuated. 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.

The report isn’t without precedence, however. A number of other provinces have also been cracking down on bitcoin mines in the past few weeks.

It’s unknown whether the crackdown operations will also spread to other parts of the province. Ya’an hosts a large demographic of miners, as the region enjoys cheap hydro electricity during the rainy season.

Related Reading | Elon Musk Wants “50% Clean Energy Bitcoin Mining,” How Do We Determine That?

Last weekened, another hydro-rich region, Yunan, also experienced crackdowns on mining bases.

CBECI Bitcoin Global Hashrate Map

Something to note is that many reports are making use of the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance index map. According to which, 65% Bitcoin hashrate is in China.

Here is the map in question:

The CBECI hashrate map | Source: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

However, there is a problem with this map. If you read the disclaimer on the website, it says:

Please note that the map has been last updated in April 2020 and may not provide an accurate representation of the current state of global hashrate distribution. In some countries, and China in particular, mining operations tend to move between locations according to seasonal variance in renewables production.

So, the CBECI map is vastly outdated as the last update was in April 2020, more than a year ago. Therefore, the source isn’t reliable.

Bitcoin Price

BTC once again seems to be going down as its value decreases by 0.52% in the past 7 days ago.

BTC gains a downward trend again | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView