China to Ban Bitcoin Mining?

April 9, 2019

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Reuters is reporting that the government of China wants to eliminate bitcoin mining in the country. According to a draft list of industrial activities, The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is seeking to stop which is a clear shot across the bow of the cryptocurrency industry. China, home to the world’s biggest cryptocurrency mining farms (between 40 percent to 70 percent of the world’s mining power is still in China), is now considering banning them.

Again?

…for more context (🇨🇳regulatory landscape is fuzzy so hard to explain everything in tweet’s length) – NDRC updates a new version of such proposal every other 3-5 years since early 2000. Items that should be eliminated by end of 2006 are still in the 2011 and 2019 versions pic.twitter.com/3v0dMvB8Tv
— Dovey Wan 🦖 (@DoveyWan) April 9, 2019

On the other hand… if it does happen.

If this ban does end up happening its more likely to push BTC prices up than down.
The loss of cheap Chinese electricity would raise the mining cost, which is net positive on price.
It would also serve to kill the FUD that Bitcoin mining is centralized.https://t.co/OhVh8fUaXv
— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) April 9, 2019

“We have already seen the Chinese government is clamping down on the use of Bitcoin as a currency, competing with the Yuan, but this has had limited impact thus far. However, if local authorities begin targeting mining farms, this could have a substantial impact on Bitcoin’s global infrastructure. People talk a lot about the risks of a 51% attack, but the problem with accumulating so much centralised hash power in areas such as China is that – should it be turned off – the Bitcoin network’s performance will be harmed, stated Matt Hawkins, CEO of Cudo Miner.

“The current status of Bitmain and its Chinese counterparts is significant to miners and the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the latest Antminer product, Bitmain will substantially reduce the global electricity use of Bitcoin, but only if the company is in a position to ship its products and if mining farm operators in China, and other regions throughout the world, take the risk of investing.

“Other networks, such as Monero and GRIN, are working hard to deploy ASIC-resistant Proof of Work algorithms that help keep GPU miners on the network. Ethereum will soon deploy Progressive Proof of Work to favour GPU characteristics, although you can argue it is already centralised through GPU farms. It’s one of the biggest challenges of distributed computing – without central coordination, computing resources are decided by the market and are at the whim of regional policies throughout the world.”

The NDRC added cryptocurrency mining to a list of about 450 industries that it proposes to eliminate. If the move is finalized, local governments in China would be prohibited from supporting makers of Bitcoin and other digital currencies through subsidies or other benefits.

p class=”css-1ygdjhk evys1bk0″>The commission said it would seek public comment until May 7 before making a final decision.

About Richard Kastelein

Founder and publisher of industry publication Blockchain News (EST
2015), a partner at ICO services collective Token.Agency
($750m+ and 90+ ICOs and STOs), director of education company
Blockchain Partners (Oracle Partner) and ICO event organiser
at leading industry event CryptoFinancing (Europe’s first ICO event now
branded Tokenomicon)
– Vancouver native Richard Kastelein is an award-winning publisher,
innovation executive and entrepreneur. He sits on the advisory boards
of some two dozen Blockchain startups and has written over 1500
articles on Blockchain technology and startups at Blockchain News and
has also published pioneering articles on ICOs in Harvard Business Review and Venturebeat. Irish Tech News put him in the top
10 Token Architects in Europe.

Kastelein has an Ad Honorem – Honorary Ph.D. and is Chair Professor of
Blockchain at China’s first Blockchain University in Nanchang
at the Jiangxi Ahead Institute of Software and Technology. In 2018 he
was invited to and attended University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School
for Business Automation 4.0 programme. Chevalier (Knight) – Ordre des
Arts et des Technologies at Crypto Chain University and an Advisory
Board Member of International Decentralized Association Of
Cryptocurrency And Blockchain (IDABC) as well as Advisory Board Member
at U.S. Blockchain Association. Over a half a decade experience judging
and rewarding some 1000+ innovation projects as an EU expert for the
European Commission’s SME Instrument programme as a startup assessor
and as a startup judge for the UK government’s Innovate UK division.

Kastelein has spoken (keynotes & panels) on Blockchain
technology in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Barcelona, Beijing, Brussels,
Bucharest, Dubai, Eindhoven, Gdansk, Groningen, the Hague, Helsinki,
London (5x), Manchester, Minsk, Nairobi, Nanchang, San Mateo, San
Francisco, Santa Clara (2x), Shanghai, Singapore (3x), Tel
Aviv, Utrecht, Venice, Visakhapatnam, Zwolle and
Zurich. His network is global and extensive.

He is a Canadian (Dutch/Irish/English/Métis) whose writing career has
ranged from the Canadian Native Press (Arctic) to the Caribbean
& Europe. He’s written occasionally for Harvard Business
Review, Wired, Venturebeat, The Guardian and Virgin.com, and his work
and ideas have been translated into Dutch, Greek, Polish, German and
French. A journalist by trade, an entrepreneur and adventurer at heart,
Kastelein’s professional career has ranged from political publishing to
TV technology, boatbuilding to judging startups, skippering yachts to
marketing and more as he’s travelled for nearly 30 years as a Canadian
expatriate living around the world. In his 20s, he sailed around the
world on small yachts and wrote a series of travel articles called,
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Seas’ travelling by hitching rides on
yachts (1989) in major travel and yachting publications. He currently
lives in Groningen, Netherlands where he’s raising three teenage
daughters with his wife and sailing partner, Wieke Beenen.

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