Bitcoin Forum

Like mineral gold, mining the digital currency isn’t free. For hardcore miners, the bottom line is cheap electricity. That is what made Chinese province Sichuan a bitcoin mining capital one day.

The wave of prohibitive measures taken by Chinese government against cryptocurrency initiatives in the country has recently reached miners. Today, on the 14th of November, local newsmedia posted an article, which reveals that Sichuan governmental hydroelectric power company issued a decree, where it declares energy consumption for mining operations out of law. ..https://en.bitnovosti.com/2017/11/14/chinese-officicals-ban-using-state-energy-for-mining/

This can only mean one thing. The Chinese government wants to use that electricity for something else. Why would China

give up it's dominance over a global currency? My prediction is that they are working on a GovCoin and they need this

electricity to mine that coin. Next thing you will see China released their own GovCoin and that they are using their cheap

electricity to mine that. Mark my words... the Chinese government wants FULL control over everything and Bitcoin is not

giving them that control.  >:(

Yes, they want to use that electricity for their factories and population.
China is a huge importer of energy, they are buying coal gas oil everything.
They even plan on buying LNG from the US.

It's about trying to be less reliant on imports and when you think about the 2 trillion in exports that feed the Chinese economy the tiny income from mining is not worth the risk.
Especially since because of NK sanctions they have to forfeit a lot of coal imports.

But this is probably the best news I've got in a month time!!!!!

Right now this is sad news. We do not have many farms outside China to sustain Bitcoin. It will be even more worst to Litecoin and Dash, they could be almost destroyed.

But in the long term, this could be great for the decentralization. More countries, especially the poor with cheap energy, could make Bitcoin farm a great commodity.

I do not think so. The Chinese has excessive amount of energy.

This is not really an anti-Bitcoin move, as we've seen in the past years how other countries were also forcing to close mining operations that were using state electricity. The reason for this is very simple - state electricity is subsidized, meaning it's cheaper than the market price, so when it's used for mining all the profits go to the miner, with very few benefits for the government, since in some cases miners don't even pay taxes if Bitcoin is not properly regulated (or those taxes are very small).

If it really happens the Chinese miners won't stop mining just like that. They have invested millions in hardware and are not going to let it waste. They will move abroad either to hong kong (if it doesn't follow the rest of China) or to East Asia. The government will lose some taxpayers and will lose the influence over cryptocurrencies it had thanks to Bitmain and other miners.

No they don't

Oil
China imported a record 6.7m barrels a day (b/d) of oil in 2015 and forecasted "to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest crude importer in 2016"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_China

Gas
Despite rapidly rising natural gas production, in 2013 China imported 52 billion cubic meters of natural gas, making it the world's fifth largest gas importer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas_in_China

Coal
China became a net importer of coal in 2008.[31] In 2006, its exports exceeded imports by 25.1 million tons, but only by 2 million tons in 2007. This is significantly lower than the 90 million ton net exports in 2001
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China


Good luck moving your miners to Hong Kong
With prices per kw between 12 and 25 cents that's not an option.

This bold part is something that is obvious that is their objective right from the beginning and what they want to ensure is that's if they cannot control bitcoin, then they want to make it less effective so they are trying every means to suffocate its continued dominance. Its so something disappointing to them with the amount of technological, financial, economical, and even political breakthroughs that they can boast of, they cannot not control bitcoin.

The simple truth is if they decide to make sure that the cost of mining in China becomes too expensive, it then create an opportunity for other countries to step into such shoes which is what will eventually happen because bitcoin is definitely going into the future.

Or they'd just rather sell the electricity (which is produced in the public sector) to groups doing things which they regard to be more important.

Regardless, whether this news is true appears to be a tad more complicated (https://www.coindesk.com/state-owned-power-provider-denies-chinese-bitcoin-mining-ban-rumors/) than just "the Chinese government bans mining Bitcoin with state-generated electricity".

As it is, mining could become more difficult due to the difficulty of trading BTC on exchanges.  The OTC market may have to grow to handle this demand.

This is a nightmare for all miners, this is the only way that government can totally stop the use of bitcoin once they declared the use of electricity for mining purposes illegal then bitcoin will eventually die.