After the stock exchanges in China had to close, the central bank is now apparently tackling the miners. According to several reports, the government has ordered an orderly shutdown of the lucrative crypto mines. Meanwhile, the miners are discovering Canada as a new home.
Mining is actually a big thing in China. The most important manufacturers of mining hardware – especially Bitmain – come from the People’s Republic, and the largest mining farms have their home here, often subsidized by excess electricity. However, this is expected to change in the near future.
According to several reports, the Chinese central bank PBOC wants to reduce mining or even gradually eliminate it completely. Bloomberg reports on a closed-door meeting on January 3rd where the PBOC decided to cut power consumption by crypto miners as Chinese officials are concerned that mining would deplete cheap electricity and penalize other electricity users. That is why now is one of the relevant times of bitcoin performance, until the authorities took this matter more seriously, which is why we provide an overview of the bitcoin profit review built according to official data cryptoine.com According to Reuters, the central bank of an internet finance group has declared that the monetary regulator can order that the local governments gradually reduce the power consumption of Bitcoin mining.
ChinaDaily from China finally writes that the local governments have even been asked to order an orderly dismantling of the mining farms. The miners are supposed to reduce production bit by bit until they finally close the crypto mines completely.According to an unknown central bank official, this order has already been sent to local governments. The Chinese online magazine YiCai also writes that the regulators have asked the local authorities to write a report on the current state of mining in their province and “to guide the mining companies to exit the market in an orderly manner” (translation and excerpt ).
According to a report by 8btc, however, the central bank does not plan to completely handle the mining, “but only to regulate the mining farms that use an unusually large amount of electricity or steal it.” The owner A farm in Sichuan said that the local authorities are currently conducting a thorough investigation and are demanding that the farms register properly and regulate their electricity consumption. The article quoted Bitmain’s CEO Jihan Wu as saying that “Mining farms that work normally will not be closed, only those that work illegally and steal electricity will now be prosecuted by the central bank and local authorities.”
Off to Quebec!
Even if the Chinese miners can still hope a little that the central bank will not ban, but only regulate, they are looking for alternatives. Canada is particularly popular right now.
According to a spokesman for Bitmain, the company is already looking for suitable locations and buildings in the Canadian province of Quebec and is in talks with regional energy suppliers. Li Wei, the CEO of ZQMiner, a company that operates several mines in three Chinese provinces, is also planning to move to Canada. The same is reported by BTC.com.
The province of Quebec has a lot of electricity left over, mostly from hydropower plants. The local energy companies have therefore been looking for buyers for an estimated electricity surplus of 100 terawatts over 10 years for some time. In addition to other data centers, mining farms are potential customers. The energy provider Hydro Quebec reports that they are already in negotiations with around 30 large crypto miners. “Of the five largest blockchain players in the world, at least three or four are with us,” said a director of the company that offers miners electricity for just under 4 dollar cents per kilowatt hour.
The problem in Quebec it is less the electricity than the buildings and the land. There is not enough building land and data center halls to meet miner demand. Therefore, old textile and paper mills in Quebec are currently being converted into mining farms.
