This is not the first time that China has banned Crypto mining. The Chinese government have actually banned the activity 18 times now.
That is a large number of bans, but you could say it’s deserved because I still cannot get my hands on a GPU due to these miners. So, good on China for the ban.
However, why exactly are they doing this? To have better grip on their economy? Well not exactly.
The local Chinese authorities have set up a sum of restrictive legislations, but nothing seems to make any sort of dent in the industry as the miners have been living large, in warehouses, mining away without a worry in their heads.
Well, looks like 19th time is the charm to finally rein them in and finally ban mining in one fall swoop.
On 24th September China’s Central bank and it’s National Development and Reform Commission issued two new laws, one of which straight up outlaws crypto mining following the crackdown that we saw in May.
That move resulted in a crash in the Bitcoin market.
The other law declared all cryptocurrency transactions to be illegal, with legislation that anyone who uses any form of cryptocurrency for any form of transaction will be prosecuted for engaging in illicit financial activity.
Stanford University’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative cofounder and deputy director Jonathan Padilla said, “The ban is sweeping, absolute, comprehensive. It is not focused on some partial aspect”.
The borderless, unregulated nature of cryptocurrency does run astray from the state controlled everything in China.
But still, why?
Beijing sees this piece of tech as mindless guesswork, a view which is technically correct.
A spokesperson for Beijing said that they have a better economic plan for the state which does not and will not include the usage of anything related to crypto.
The other problem with crypto mining is temperature.
One of the other reasons why Bitcoin mining was banned in China was the usage of energy and the CO2 output from mining is massive.
The sheer space they occupy to run mining rigs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week has caused a spike in energy usage in China.
This is also going against the government’s environmental plan of being Carbon Neutral by 2060.
Plus, reports say China is digitalising the Yuan.
The state-backed currency is designed to offer some surface level features found in regular cryptocurrencies, but – without a major reason most people actually use crypto – privacy.
