China puts cryptocurrency mining on industrial blacklist in final step to eliminate the activity
- The National Development and Reform Commission has added cryptocurrency mining to a list of industries that China wants to abolish
- This action could hammer the final nail in the coffin of cryptocurrency mining activities in China
It was the sole revision made by the NDRC in its review of the country’s latest Industrial Structure Adjustment Guidance Catalogue, which took effect in January last year. The catalogue divides domestic industries into three categories: those that should be encouraged, restricted and eliminated.
The agency is soliciting public opinion on the revision through November 21.
Other activities on China’s industrial blacklist include manufacturing disposable dinnerware made of plastic foam and disposable cotton bud made of plastic, as well as coal mining at nature reserves, tourist attractions or protected drinking water source zones.
Those moves redoubled the country’s efforts to remove deeply buried risk within its financial system and proceed with an ambitious energy-saving and emissions-cutting campaign.
Bitcoin mining in China drops to zero, as US becomes top market
The crackdown in China has led to the US becoming the world’s largest cryptocurrency miner in terms of hash rate, a unit of measure for the bitcoin network’s processing power to verify transactions and create new cryptocurrencies.
The US contributed 35.4 per cent to the global hash rate in August, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia with 18.1 per cent and 11.2 per cent, respectively, according to the latest data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI).
China was still the world’s top location for bitcoin mining as recently as June, when it contributed to 34.3 per cent of the global hash rate, down from a peak of 65 per cent in April 2020. CBECI’s latest data for July and August shows China at 0 per cent.