- China’s ban on Bitcoin mining has seen more and more local governments taking action over on miners in the region
- The latest crackdown has come in Yunnan, where miners have two weeks to switch to renewables or shut down
- China’s crackdown on Bitcoin mining is due to its desire to curb its emissions in the coming decades
If anyone was left in any doubt that China’s ban on Bitcoin mining was anything less than completely serious, recent developments in the Yunnan province will have dispelled those doubts. Yunnan authorities were recently tipped off that energy supplies in the region were becoming unreliable, with an investigation revealing that Bitcoin miners were the culprit. The local government has acted quickly and told all Bitcoin miners using non-renewable energy sources that they have until the end of the month to find clean energy or they will be closed down.
China’s Bitcoin Mining Ban Finally Has Teeth
China announced its latest crackdown on Bitcoin mining several weeks ago, but such is the frequency with which they issue these edicts that the crypto world took the news with a pinch of salt. This time round however the stakes seem to be a lot higher, with the country’s target of curbing its carbon emissions in the coming decades driving a renewed desire to oust Bitcoin mining from the country. This only applies to Bitcoin miners who source their energy from non-renewable sources however, with the country’s hydroelectric miners unaffected by the ban.
Yunnan Province Issues Two Week Deadline
Inner Mongolia was one of the first regions to take steps to remove Bitcoin miners from its midst, even going as far as setting up a tip line for members of the public to report mining operations in the region. Other regions have taken similar steps to rid themselves of Bitcoin mining operations, with the latest being Yunnan Province, where the local government recently discovered that a drop in electricity supply to parts of the region was down to Bitcoin mining.
Yunnan authorities reacted to this by issuing a demand that all Bitcoin mining operations using non-renewables must leave the region by the end of June, making them the latest in a line of Chinese provinces taking steps to force ‘dirty’ Bitcoin miners to clean up or get out.
The Bitcoin mining crackdown in China has hit larger mining operations harder in areas such as Xinjiang and Sichuan than smaller ones, with the latter able to move their resources to more suitable areas or simply restart their activities once the attention has moved on. It may be then that miners in places like Yunnan simply press the pause button rather than shutting down for good.
