Bitcoin (BTC) mining again rises in China with 21% of the global hashrate
The University of Cambridge has just released a new report on Bitcoin (BTC) mining worldwide. This new data covers the period from September 2021 to January 2022. During this time, China has re – established itself as a “big hub” of the mining industry.
According to the data, the territory of China is concentrated 21.11% of the hashrate, the computing power of the Bitcoin (BTC) network. However, the Chinese government is formal Bitcoin mining banned in May 2021 citing environmental concerns.
Subsequently, the authorities went in search of confused minors cut off the electricity supply in certain provinces, especially in the Sichuan Valley. 90% of the country’s farms closed last summer. For a time, Cambridge University no longer detected any minors in China.
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The United States consolidates its position as a mining leader
Despite the ban, China is now the 2nd country in the world with the most hashrate. First, we see, not surprisingly, the United States (37.84%). Following the restrictions in China, many miners migrated their facilities to American soil, especially in Texas (11.22%), Georgia (30.76%) and Kentucky (10.93%). That report shows “It simply came to our notice then […] but it also surpassed the rest of the world in hash growth ”.
3rd, we see Kazakhstan (13.22%) followed by Canada (6.48%) and Russia (4.66%). Prior to the bans enacted by Beijing, China accounted for 44% of the computing power of the Bitcoin network. In 2019, the Chinese farm-based hashrate even reached an all-time high of 75% before stabilizing at around 55%.
A covert mining industry operates in China
Cambridge University researchers blame the revival of miners in China “underground industry”. According to the report, the farms are probably mining continue to operate on Chinese territory taking precautions. British researchers explain:
“Access to off-grid electricity sources and small geographical distribution of operators are the main routes to circumvent the ban”.
To protect themselves from the authorities, probably rely on the miners “Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or other Proxy Services”. These tools made it possible to hide their location. That is why countries like Germany or Irelandwhich is home to many VPN servers, having started climbing in the results of the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI).
Launched in 2019, this index quickly established itself as one of the benchmarks in the sector. To provide an estimate of Bitcoin network energy consumption in real time, the researchers rely in particular on the location data provided by several pools. The researchers assume that the IP address of a mining farm is a reliable indicator and that the sample of the pools is representative of the entire industry.
If many cryptocurrency miners start to hide their location, the relevance of the index may be called into question. The researchers also attributed the “The brutality of the revival” from farms in China to “Methodological compromise”. In concrete terms, not all of the mining infrastructure has really left China after the restrictions. De facto, at least some of the miners from China are not listed by the index, because it is possible to hide their IP address. So it is possible that more farms are still operating on Chinese soil.
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Source: University of Cambridge
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