China May Expand Bitcoin Mining Site Closures and Crackdowns Nationwide

Bloomberg "Cryptocurrency Exchange Searches Not Available on Chinese Internet"

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Suhwan] As the Chinese central government has declared a principle to completely ban the trading and mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, crackdowns on cryptocurrency mining farms are expanding throughout China.

According to local media on the 10th, Qinghai Province in northwest China announced in the "Notice on the Complete Closure of All Types of Cryptocurrency Mining Projects" released last night that all cryptocurrency mining farms in the region will be completely shut down.

Qinghai Province stated that it will thoroughly identify companies that secretly mine cryptocurrencies by registering as other industries such as big data centers or supercomputer centers, in addition to those registered as cryptocurrency mining farms, and requested related agencies not to provide business space or electricity to cryptocurrency mining companies.

Qinghai Province is the second provincial-level administrative region in China, after the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, to officially declare a complete closure of mining farms.

Until now, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which has a high dependence on coal power generation and power shortages, has shown the most active crackdown on Bitcoin mining farms, but western provincial-level administrative regions such as Sichuan Province, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, and Yunnan Province, which have relatively more stable power conditions, have shown a lukewarm attitude toward mining farm crackdowns.

However, the State Council, the central government of China, held a meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Committee chaired by Vice Premier Liu He on the 21st of last month and announced a tough principle to "crack down on Bitcoin mining and trading activities," raising expectations that crackdowns on cryptocurrency mining farms may expand nationwide in China.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reported on the 9th (local time) that internet searches for cryptocurrency exchanges are not working in China.

The media reported that searching for famous cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, OKEs, and Huobi on search engine company Baidu and China's social media Weibo yields no results.

Bloomberg News added that there are speculations that the Chinese government, which recently declared a crackdown on cryptocurrencies, may have blocked internet users' access to cryptocurrency exchanges.

Earlier, Coindesk and others also raised the possibility of the Chinese authorities blocking internet access to cryptocurrency exchanges.

China has completely banned new cryptocurrency issuance and trading since September 2017, but Bitcoin exchanges operated by Chinese capital have continued to operate targeting Chinese customers by relocating their headquarters offshore to places like Singapore.

In response, China recently declared that it will strongly crack down on the underground cryptocurrency trading within the country and eradicate "mining," which supports the cryptocurrency ecosystem. This has been evaluated as delivering a shock to the cryptocurrency market, with the prices of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin falling continuously.