China closes Bitcoin mining pools in Xinjiang and Qinghai

Qinghai Province and Xinjiang Autonomous Region have been ordered by Chinese authorities to close down virtual currency mines from today.
In a row in a day, China has made strong moves to crack down on virtual currency-related activities. After the announcement of the arrest of more than 1,100 people suspected of using virtual currency to launder money, China continued to ask the Qinghai provinces and Xinjiang Autonomous Region to close the virtual currency mines.

Specifically, leaders in Qinghai province ordered the closure of Bitcoin mining pools on Wednesday (June 9) and banned related companies from operating in the province. On the same day, leaders in the city of Changji in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region ordered the closure of the mines here, which hold the largest Bitcoin mining capacity in the world. Inside a cryptocurrency mine in Sichuan. Meanwhile, searches for the keywords Huobi, Binance and OKEx have also been blocked on the search engine Baidu and on the social network Weibo. These are the three major virtual currency exchanges in the world and are used by the Chinese to trade cryptocurrencies. This is the second time Weibo has blocked cryptocurrency-related content in the past few months. In March, the social media accounts of the three exchanges were blocked by Weibo for unknown reasons. Earlier, Weibo also blocked the account of Binance co-founder and famous shark Justin Sun. A series of moves to crack down on virtual currencies from China has caused Bitcoin to plummet since the middle of last month, at times dropping more than 50% from its peak to $30,000. The reason given is because virtual currency mining goes against China’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2060. According to data from the University of Cambridge, Bitcoin miners consume about 111.5 Terawatts per hour in a year, equivalent to the total electricity consumed in the Netherlands. On Monday, the Chinese regulator held a meeting to emphasize the task of strengthening the supervision of blockchain platforms, VPN (virtual private network) services and cross-border technologies with gambling elements. . China is taking over the world’s largest Bitcoin mining capacity. (source: Cambridge University) China currently accounts for about 65% of global Bitcoin mining capacity, according to the University of Cambridge. Among them, the regions of Xinjiang, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia currently account for the largest capacity. Qinghai province ranked ninth, accounting for about 0.26% of total capacity. The Inner Mongolia region began cracking down on miners in February and shut down 35 mining companies at the end of April. Sichuan is currently the most neutral place when it comes to hydroelectricity instead of coal mines and no new policy has yet been introduced. Outside of China, miners are actively looking for new homes. The President of El Salvador has officially recognized Bitcoin as a legal currency and promoted the mining of this virtual currency using geothermal energy from volcanoes. Phuong Nguyen (according to SCMP)