Bitcoin Forum

The struggles of Bitcoin seem to be unending, with many uncertainties hovering over the new technology. Earlier this year, the Chinese government intensified efforts towards the banning of Bitcoin mining. Some of the reasons stated includes the electricity consumption, and the environmental threats of the mining process. This has raised a lot of questions as to what could become of the technology, considering the role of China when it comes to Bitcoin mining. So we ask, what happens if China bans Bitcoin mining?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6sc-XRY3RA

How Relevant is China in Bitcoin Mining?

Over 75% of the mining pools in the Bitcoin network are located in China. This has automatically made the region a very important one for Bitcoin as a whole. It now looks as if Bitcoin depends on China to survive. This is why every rumour, news or event coming out of the Asia-Pacific region as a whole is usually of great concern to the industry.

China is home to the biggest mining equipment manufacturing company in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry. Bitmain, which is a hardware manufacturing company that specialises in computer chips, is located in Beijing. When it comes to Bitcoin mining equipment, Bitmain has no competition. It is responsible for shipping billions of ASIC mining rigs to different parts of the world. This accounts to over 75% of the equipment that is available in the industry.

As a matter of interest, most of this equipment doesn’t go too far from the source. Favourable weather and affordable electricity mean that many Bitcoin mining farms prefer to setup in and around the China region. Hydroelectricity and coal are cheaper sources of power, although the environmental implications of coal do not go down well with the immediate society. The pollution that it causes is among the reasons why China is considering the ban, as mentioned above.

Why are Bitcoin Mining Farms located in China?

The Bitcoin mining industry of today exists more in the form of mining pools. Instead of having individuals, or small companies running independent mining platforms, resources are contributed in a unified front. An example of this is Bitclub Network. Different units come together and contribute resources so that they can compete effectively in finding blocks. When they do, the rewards are then shared based on individual contribution. This is what informs the need for building gigantic farms, and why a region like China with favourable atmospheric and cost tolerance is preferred.

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Regulatory tolerance has also enabled this attraction towards China, even though the ban on different aspects of the crypto industry have been pointers towards a similar take on Bitcoin mining. Exchanges have been banned, and so have other areas that have to do with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. What most practitioners in the affected areas did was simply relocate their businesses.

When it comes to Bitcoin mining, things can be a bit more complicated. Finding another conducive region that would tolerate the kind of mining activities that go on in China will not be easy. Also, moving the gigantic infrastructure that is used for mining will not be an easy task either. These are some of the issues that come to mind when considering what happens if China bans Bitcoin mining.

Are There Other Options Apart From China?

If China goes ahead to ban Bitcoin mining, a number of scenarios are likely to play out. The network will temporarily lose over 75% of mining power or hash rate that comes from the region. What this means, is that for that while fewer transactions will be carried out, and the rate of creating new Bitcoins will drop significantly. Once new rigs have been formed and implemented, network activity can return to normal.

From an economic perspective of supply and demand, if supply drops, there will be scarcity, and the price of Bitcoin will be expected to grow. But there is more to these things than meets the eye.

In view of the implications and possibilities, just like other aspects of the industry found new grounds to operate from, Bitcoin miners are already beginning to look elsewhere. Bitmain has already set up operations in inner Mongolia, Iceland is becoming home to some major mining companies, and Canada is being studied as a possible destination for others.

Is Bitcoin Really Bigger Than China?

Indeed, the role of China in the industry cannot be neglected, it has served as one of the most vibrant regions for Bitcoin development so far. However, the level of uncertainty that emanates from this same region, and the tendency of the government of China to dish out instant regulatory measures, is a threat to the technology.

Definitely, any ban on Bitcoin mining in China will cause some shake up in the industry. The possibility of it alone is already causing some movement as described above. But like the changes that we have seen before now, as much as the role of China has been significant, Bitcoin is designed to be bigger than one particular country or region.

With peer-to-peer trading platforms like Vertex.Market catering to people in over 200 countries, maybe it already is.

In considering what happens if China bans Bitcoin mining, if it goes through there will likely be some shake-up in the industry. However, just like we have seen before, the technology has the capacity to shake off the effects, and move on with development. It could be another reminder of “the many lives of Bitcoin”.

https://medium.com/@official_83664/what-happens-if-china-bans-bitcoin-mining-7f0dfa276ded

Bitcoin mining is a big and profitable enterprise with many players based in China exploiting the cheap power and manpower rates. In case China will finally decide to make the threat of ban come into effect, then there will be a diaspora from China to other suitable countries. And I think the transfer had actually started in 2017 albeit slowly as players felt that eventually China may ban the mining in the country for different grounds. That China has not yet decided on this matter is even a little surprise to me. Perhaps the leadership of China has realized that bitcoin mining is bringing in good revenues anyway and that they can one day leverage this power and influence for various applications. I would be happy to see other countries also entering this industry so we can avoid monopoly or concentration (centralization)  of power and influence in a single country.

I doubt that it will collapse, it may have significant effect on the ecosystem. But to say that it will fall just because of China banning bitcoin mining is absurd. And I'm sure big mining companies inside China has already a plan B in case the government made that bold move. At least if this happens, then it can break the monopoly and I'm sure there will be companies and countries will to take the lead.

Whoever wrote that doesn't seem to know anything about difficulty. Difficulty adjusts based on the previous 2016 blocks. So if "suddenly" there was a lot less hash power, then transactions would slow down as it was adjusting and once 2016 blocks had been solved, it would be operating like before. Bitcoin doesn't need China to carry on. That's one of the beauties of the design. I think there's even been some discussions that if something catastrophic happened, there might be a release to quickly adjust the difficulty but who knows if they could agree to that or not.

If China bans bitcoin mining inside their political jurisdiction then the mining farms in their area will just transfer to another country to mine. Bitcoin data centers have already a taste of how profitable bitcoin mining is and will not be stopped even if the state will not allowed them to mine. They will simply transfer their equipment and facilities out of China and continue to mine. Bitcoin mining is unstoppable except if all bitcoin blocks have been mined.

Probably they already realize and knew how big the revenue is hence I don't see any reason for China to bring down bitcoin mining.
However, if China had their change of mind I guess Russia is ready to take over as they are the second-largest mining farm and so it will not be hard to eventually add mining rigs.


That so impossible. Of course, it may have an adverse effect but not for long.

Why it will collapse? is 100% of the miners are in china?
Yes, bitcoin mining and the altcoin mining industry in China is big and contributes a huge chunk of miner pool in the system but that doesn't mean that when miners from China stopped mining bitcoin the whole mining system will collapse. Even though China has a huge number of miners there are still other countries that contribute a good amount in the mining business.

China banning Bitcoin would definitely have an impact on the cryptocurrency industry, not just because a big part of the mining farms are located there, but because the majority of world's population is located there. Mining farms will probably just sell the rigs to farms in the nordic countries or simply relocate. I think using alternative sources like geotermal, solar and wind energy are the way to go in crypto mining. Also it is much more efficient to set up a farm in a cold place like Finland or what about Greenland? - there is no one there so could be a viable place to build up a powerful farm.

I wonder why they do that when electricity is clearly not free but the miners themselves pay for electricity.
that is what I think that the Chinese government wants to take over the work of miners so that the government can use bitcoin to make money.
I'm not cynical, but this is China always wants to master anything that can benefit it.

China might be having huge mining farms but so does the rest of the world, the reason to ban due to electricity consumption and environment threats by any country are misdirection because the majority of the pollution from China stems from coal fired power plants and they have not taken any steps to control that and they are blaming bitcoin mining farms as environment threat is a joke  ::).

Nothing happens, you do not need big mining farms to be truly decentralized  :P, if there is a need i am sure people will start running the node from their homes to help the network because this market helped many to make a fortune and they will do it as a token of respect to carry on the process to help the network.

If China in any way happens to ban crypto minning. It still won't be able to exercise his powers completely over all the miners. There are two reasons as to it:

• Big Miners can move abroad: Big Miners who can mine a fortune out of cryptocurrencies will try to leave the countries to nearby islands like Taiwan and Fiji or even Mauritius which can act as tax heaven countries.
  
• Generally speaking Miners don't require assistance of government in any way to mine cryptos in the first place so there is no way they can stop it unless they are willing to raid every house which is suspicious for mining. There is no way to trace such mining activities. It will be a hard time for them implementing law.

The point is that they won't ban

If BTC mining in China is banned then collapse will occur. However, miners may well transfer their equipment to other countries and the mining industry will recover. However, how long will it take?

I think if China bans mining, then this will not create a collapse. It will have a negative effect but it will be restored.
I have a thought that if China bans mining, the country will lose a lot than if China legalized mining.

Considering that 75% of the mining pools is located on China, if China government decides to ban Bitcoin mining, the Bitcoin mining industry can go into a chaos period I think. Bitmain is building data centers for Bitcoin miners in different countries and this could be effective on preventing such possibility for the industry.

collapse only in China is certain!!   but the big miners must have thought of a way out that they would do..  IMO, there are only two choices they can choose  if Chinese government really Ban Bitcoin mining, that is mining in a very remote area (still in China) or cooperating and opening a new mine with miners in other countries that are more accepting of Bitcoin.

Think we'd lose a lot of miners for sure, for at least a little while. We've already seen how much mining operations China owns and it makes up a lot of our blockchain.

If this was to happen, most mining companies with millions of hardware would either just cut their profits and quit the scene, or secretly still be active and risk punishments, or move to another region with cheaper electricity or a viable way for them to generate their own electricity.

It'll be one of their most stupid movies if they where to ban mining, Chinese companies and the governments make a decent penny off that.

To tell the truth, I am a little scared of the possibility that China could ban Bitcoin mining in the near future. Bitmain seems to have a plan B for that. Bitmain is on the path of building new mining centers on different places to make Bitcoin Network stronger.

Other countries might take over, and start a big mining farm. China had been on and off when it comes to crypto, announcing they will ban it, and then later they will take back what they have announced. They are holding the biggest mining farm and it will somehow affect the whole system, but I think in time we can adjust since there are still other miners and as I, 've said other countries might take over and start creating a mining farms.

If I am not wrong since 2017 china government decide a total banned for all bitcoin related works. So nothing  to worry and panic for that news for me is that an old news even china are decide to get out of the world of digital cryptocurrency is now still stronger in the market. So be coll and do not panic just be calm yourself.

that is a big lie. China banning bitcoin mining is not a strong guarantee that the entire bitcoin mining ecosystem will collapse. What evidence do you have that can prove that the majority of bitcoin mining firms are located in china?  Banning mining in China will not have any significant impact on the bitcoin mining ecosystem. This is because people will continue mining bitcoin in China even if mining is ban in China.  Setting up a bitcoin mining firm does not really need the approval of the government before you can start operating...

if the state of China starts to block bitcoin mining it will make mining companies in china lose a lot and of course it can have an effect on the price of bitcoin at the exchange place, hopefully bitcoin mining can still circulate and the Chinese government does not make mistakes that can make many people lose .

China have banned bitcoin mining after they announce banned for using bitcoin as transaction and investment, last three years ago China have to banned bitcoin, ICO and bitcoin mining without giving reason why have to banned bitcoin as legal transaction, price dump but can raise back to higher again after several day later, I heard China want adopt bitcoin as legal transaction again in their country.

It affected the current price of the market but bitcoin was still able to keep its trend even China banned it before.
If China will plan to ban Bitcoin again the history will only repeat itself.

I think what you are talking about is the news regarding their announcement about publishing their own cryptocurrency, it was published last August and for now, I think they are close to launching their own cryptocurrency.

In my opinion, most of the mining fascilities are in the cold weather and areas such as alphs and poles. In this case they can save energy source. I f china bans mining then it can affect the crypto as a whole since the hash power will decline as well. On the other hand, China couldn't just ban since there are still some chinese that benefits upon it. What they should do is to support it further and build better mining infrastructure.

So far China has the lowest rate for mining, especially on electricity costs. Considering how much and relevant bitcoin mining is in China. The ban of bitcoin mining will greatly affect the loss of many hash rates, looking forward if this really happens is bad impact.

Easy answer: The other miners will be happy

Imagine that mining in China is oil production in some country. Suddenly oil is running out, is actually this the end of the extraction of fuels and lubricants? No, there will be other countries that replace this. So if China bans it, there will be other countries and other miners that will replace it.

Plenty of mining takes place elsewhere and anyone who mistakes pools for actual miners is not paying any attention. Pools are just a group pulling in mining from all over the world. Many of them don't mine themselves and miners can switch elsewhere in a few clicks.

The de facto end of Chinese pools would be a total positive. Anything that removes Chinese involvement is a positive in the long run.

Banning bitcoin in China would be a big blow to the entire network as this is likely to slow down transactions as the OP rightly said. However i think Bitmain and other mining farms need to relocate to outskirts of cities and towns instead of being within the community if that's the situation at the moment. Because the mining of bitcoin really causes noise pollution and i think relocating to the outskirts of towns would be a good resolution. Using sound proof doors is likely going to increase the heat within the the farm and using cooling systems can also increase their cost of electricity consumption.
Also, i think mining farms which still use coal to mine should be made to stop as this also pollutes the environment.

Bitcoin mining is already banned in China and nothing has changed up to now? In social media you can see some Chinese saying they are still mining but secretly and mostly in the outskirts. I haven't heard Bitmain mining lately but I doubt they stopped mining. So it is either they continue mining in the outskirts or relocated to another country.

China has been a favored place for miners because of its climate and labor and electricity prices. If what OP's post is true that a large percentage of mining farms are in China, and a ban would be implemented, it would definitely shake the market and the network. But that's as far as we can know. We cannot tell if people would start to panic as price drops, or they would remain and hold their bitcoins, potentially increasing price because supply cannot keep up with demand, since fewer rigs means slower generation of new blocks, and new bitcoins too.

I think it only gives a little bad news that can affect the price conditions at the exchange place, indeed the price of bitcoin will initially collapse but will definitely rise again because of the location of the bitcoin mining industry not only in China, but many other countries are doing a bit of bitcoin.

There is huge difference when you say China holding bitcoin and the people holding bitcoin, if the Chinese government is holding the coins they they will not impose these restrictions and as far as i know there is no mining ban in China but trading and using bitcoin in China is not possible for the past two years, you cannot shut down the entire mining farms in China in a day and expect nothing will happen, there will be a huge network issue if they force the exchanges to shut everything in a day but i do not think it will happen.

Hello members,
The truth is if china does that brander I mean of banning Bitcoin mining,their economy will decline and this will affect the whole system of cryptocurrency
yes we shall suffer a little bite but I have a feeling that other countries have a plan B as I speak some countries are yearning for that chance.China should not take electricity as an excuse thank you

I think that if they ban it or not it will still go on and nothing much will change, maybe some of the big companies that are set to mining bitcoin will relocate or maybe shut down, but a lot of individuals will stay and just mine in the shadows as all things that become illegal, and the thing about bitcoin is that it is adaptive, the blockchain and the difficulty is based on how many people are mining so if china banned bitcoin mining, the number of miners will go down but the price and the supply of the bitcoin will stay the same.

I don't see any reason for them to be facing an economic failure if ever that they ban bitcoin mining. They will actually have an advantage for it if that will happen since bitcoin will probably drop, they can use that chance because they made a step on manipulating its price for that reason.
Cryptocurrency will the only one who will be affected since the demand will decrease.

Indeed, it has no adverse effect on this market when people in China are not allowed to mine, people of other countries will exploit, in general, this plan only harms Chinese investors because I heard that the number of miners here is relatively high, the ban will affect the extraction process and the damage to economic benefits is very much. Following this situation, the Chinese government will need a reasonable explanation to these investors when they are making money and building this country, this ban is unfair and destroys their way of making money

They will never do for sure,they have the majority of bitcoin(that’s what I’ve heard) so why on earth they will do that?
Because surely either US or EU will do action to save this market if China did that desperate move

Yes agree with your thought, we do have same perspective, yes we know that China has a lot of power and really not in favor yet in Bitcoin, especially Mining in their country, but look what happened to the price, still we are adopting and the users still increasing everyday, so for me, there is nothing will change when they banned mining.

China is already try to ban crypto and nothing changed. I dont think that they are going to really change something

You are right. The same thing that all exchanges did when China no longer allowed banks to process transactions. Some went bankrupt and the rest moved somewhere else like Hong Kong. Mining in China is cheap so if the cost goes up the cost of the product will also go up. You can't expect someone to sell you Bitcoin for 7k if the cost of mining is 8.
If it happens it will only prove that the market can regulate itself.

The Chinese government wants to ban cryptocurrency mining based on its research, which shows that they can harm their economy.  Many analysts say that bitcoin mining is very energy-consuming and consumes almost 0, 5% of all electricity in the world.  But given that almost 60-80 percent of all capacity is located in China, it seems to me that most of the load on the energy system is received by China.  Based on the fact that cryptocurrency has somehow risen in price since the time of 2015, and the Chinese state has not received any income from mining, and therefore cryptocurrency mining will cause dissatisfaction with the government, since cryptocurrencies are still unregulated and the Chinese government will not be able to control the production of cryptocurrencies in order to receive  some kind of benefit.

If they shutdown all the mining farms, the network will have slow transactions for a while, depending where it is at the regular 2016 block difficulty adjusts, which usually takes about two weeks. When the diff adjusts, everything is back to normal, so no Bitcoin doesn't really mind, its been designed around that.

Shutting down exchanges and farms, of course affects the people involved, they are losing their source of income. But on a global scale, it matters little. Again Bitcoin doesn't care if there are a 100 miners or a 100 million miners, and certainly doesn't care if exchanges exist at all. This is an out of Bitcoin thing that is convenient for non miner people wanting to acquire bitcoin with the only kind of money they have: fiat. If they somehow got altcoins, they can dex p2p exchange those for bitcoin, without the need for centralized exchanges anywhere.

To answer OP question: What happens? Not much really. Just a temporary slowdown of transactions, that's it. It has happened before...

Not much really! Only the price will tank to test the previous bear market low or maybe even go deeper :D

A ban is always a big hit. If the EU were to ban Bitcoin it would probably suffer a big plunge just like if the US did it. It wouldn't destroy Bitcoin because in time farms would move and difficulty would adjust but short term it would be a disaster.

China is not only country in the world where Bitcoin is mine although they have highest number of miners in the world but with the country like Syria etc legalizing Bitcoin mining if the Chinese government ban Bitcoin mining today it will boost the price of Bitcoin market.

I wouldn't be viable and likely possible for people to just stay in the shadows and ignore the regulations that would be made public if China ever does choose to ban bitcoin mining. Those companies attempting to hide would likely be caught since it's pretty easy to locate an area where a lot of electricity is being used (implying that it's a bitcoin mining operation).

Instead, I reckon we'd see a lot of short term panic from the instant drop of miners (a lot of chinese companies would likely instantly need to shut down and find a place to relocate with decent electricity prices), and we'd lose a lot of support.

Price dumps, longer transaction times, are all very real consequences that could happen if this goes through.

If China bans bitcoin mining there will be no destruction in the world of cryptocurrency, because mining companies in China will move
location to other countries that can receive. Indeed, there are many mining farms in China, but they will not have a negative effect to
bitcoin.A mining company must have a solution and there is always a plan B related to this. So large companies like Bitman too has
mining farm in various countries to anticipate if this happens.

If China bans Bitcoin mining then we would wait days for a transaction to be confirmed , mining power will abolish at a high percentage, Bitcoin will go down a lot and a lot of other secondary effects who will make Bitcoin slow in all sectors.
Besides this, if something like this would happen ( which I think its no possible ) a lot of miners will move from China to other Asians countries very fast in order to keep their business running and a lot of new mining factories will appear in countries like Iceland or Ukraine and Russia.

I wasn't talking about bitcoin price, i was talking about Bitcoin network. The price could fluctuate, as always, but it also does recover, as always. While mining is not banned, exchanges and the use of bitcoin is, and as i recall, at that time the price also did fluctuate, but its long in the past... Bitcoin will continue without China, or any other country for that matter. And in reality, ban just make things harder, but doesn't disappear it completely. Unlike mining, you can still use bitcoin if you are careful. To hide mining is very hard unless you are also very small, perhaps a few asic miners but never those large facilities.

Also miners can always double as "self subsided" heaters.

If ever that China will ban Bitcoin Mining, it will affect people who are working on it. Bitcoin mining becomes one of their source of income, it would be hard for them to recover in case that it will be gone.

If China prohibits mining Bitcoin it will only have an impact in their own country, the Bitcoin miners will certainly be very disappointed and stop doing this work.  But not for other countries, Bitcoin mining is one way to get money from Bitcoin, if China stops mining Bitcoin this will actually benefit Bitcoin miners from other countries, because their rivals are reduced.

Yes will have big affected to china if they ban it because many are working in mining bitcoin.
So its been hard to some people on china once this is happen.

Not only in the citizen of China, but also in the whole cryptocurrency. Every user not only the miners will face another dump. We all know that when Bitcoin was banned in a certain country, its demand will decrease, it will affect the price of bitcoin and that will become a struggle again.

It will not be an end game for Bitcoin if China banned mining, we all know that for few years they are not in favor, but still the number of users still increasing everyday despite of it, so we really don't care about China at all as Bitcoin can stand to itself and there's a lot of miners out there that can fulfill the responsibility.

I hope this does not happen, because it can negatively affect the market

This is a very mixed decision to ban mining in China, since China is one of the leading countries in the development of this direction in the crypto industry.

If anybody is trying to under quote the effect of such ban, it would be grossly misleading because truth be told, when mining becomes outlawed in China, the effect in the market would be drastic and I see a lot of people abandoning crypto because it would mean transactions would not get confirmed and the moment that is happening, that is the beginning of the end unless something drastic is done to reverse the trend. But the good news is that quite a number of mining farms are run by entrepreneurs and they are aware of the volatility of their status in that part of the world which is making them consider other locations to set up farms and when China pulls the plug, the effect would not be really drastic.

China is not totally against the crypto industry. China just wanted to regulate or let's say take control as deep as possible. It will be impossible for the Chinese government as they are decentralized. I won't be surprised if China will create their own crypto version in the future as there are many big cities that are turning into digital payments.

Should mining be banned in China, it would be a very big blow to the cryptocurrencies considering the the number of mining plants the citizens own in that particular country. In spite of the many challenges that comes with mining of cryptocurrencies, China is still a strong country so far as the mining of cryptocurrencies are concerned.

It would deal a massive blow to a series of Chinese companies that rode the crypto wave by providing mining and production tools to the industry like Bitmain . Losing those large facilities, which benefit from economies of scale, could help smaller miners compete in China, where small operations would be more likely to continue operating under the radar, and elsewhere.

This latest news out of China about mining, could well serve to further distribute hash rate and thus strengthen the network. This would ultimately be a positive development for Bitcoin generally and may directly answer one of Bitcoin’s most repeated criticisms.

Bitmain have had the money and demand to go global. It's not the biggest or the minnows who'd be affected the most, it's the middle ground and they probably make up a decent amount of the overall hash rate.

Still plenty of others ready to fill in if they do clear out.

I think most of us will be happy if bitcoin mining was banned in china  ;D ;D Most of the hashing comes from there and they get miners and electricity so cheap that there is no keeping up. The rest of us will finally have a chance.

They can make their own currency and mine that with their miners if they looking for something to mine.

I agree with you as i believe that Mining companies in China have already exit plan to continue their operation in case of Banning and besides not only China has affordable electricity in the world because their are lot of places that can match their cost that even much little expensive but still it is better than their enterprise will not continue operating.

The main problem is that China has a significantly cheaper labour cost and electrical cost due to their proximity to renewable energy sources. The fact that the biggest ASIC companies are all based in China also help to cut down their expense significantly. Given the cost of shipping the ASICs overseas with the effort required to find another suitable place, I doubt that the network would recover that well.

But realistically, China wouldn't ban Bitcoin mining. It does still contribute to the economy in general and their stance is just to avoid dealing with Bitcoin as a commodity.

Absolutely, the Chinese government has been threatening harsh regulations for years - but for now it is an excellent option for miners. In fact, President Xi Jinping recently gave a speech embracing blockchain technology and it's potential uses, so it looks fairly good for Chinese miners at present.

For sure, they will mostly migrate out of China. However, one should take into account how much cheaper it is to mine in China than elsewhere because of low electricity rates and relatively cheap and available man power. How do you think that would impact Chinese miners if they had to migrate?

It's very likely that they would migrate, since mining is still super profitable for them. The cryptocurrency industry definitely needs to get on the sustainable electricty train, so perhaps miners migrating to a country with harsher regulations around electricity would encourage that.

It might be challenging for them to actually enforce the law, but it will still make mining more difficult in China. Operating under secrecy is always difficult, particularly when you're running a big mining operation and using a lot of electricity.

It would possibly present quite a challenge - do you think Chinese miners would migrate to other countries where regulations are less strict? It definitely poses a problem.

It would be a bad move on the part of the Chinese government. Yes, miners could migrate especially since operating in secrecy in a surveillance state could be quite challenging. Overall, it may cause a disruption in the crypto scene.

Yes, other countries may take over - but that wouldn't happen with immediate effect. What do you think would happen to the cryptocurrecy industry should China ban mining? Would exchanges and marketplaces like Vertex also be affected?

Yes, it would potentially have a hugely negative impact on Bitcoin hash rates - which are already quite slow in comparison to other blockchains. Ultimately, we don't know if China would ban mining but if they did it would certainly present some problems for the rest of the crypto asset industry too.

You're right. Miners need to start looking into powering their rigs with sustainable electricity. It is becoming a huge problem, and sustainable solutions are the only way to go at this point. Relocating could help with decreasing some of the negative social impact, but how would it help with electricity usage - other than the cooling systems?

Yes, the price and supply will remain the same - but the hash rate would definitely decrease, which could be the source of a lot of frustration. Operating illegally is obviously an option, but could prove quite difficult in a surveillance state like China.

Mining have lost popular so far because have small reward after bitcoin and altcoin price down, many people and companies have sold their mining tools and try for investing and trade with bitcoin or altcoin, maybe China have banned bitcoin mining after last two years they banned bitcoin and altcoin as transaction payment and investment assets, there very small community still running with bitcoin mining to earn altcoin or bitcoin.

A few years ago I was hearing news that there were indeed rules for mining in China, I forgot the details but the government gave notice to them. If bitcoin mining is banned in China, then where will bitcoin mining benefit? Here the biggest bitcoin mining is in china, and after I looked for information indeed in the calculation of costs in China is very supportive for mining.

I think they could potentially do that especially I heard some articles and we know that china is very controversial and hate things like bitcoin. I guess it is because it has an anonymous transaction and it doesn't have a trusted technology in their sides, also I read some articles that bitcoin was made by China and they own the blockchain but this is just theory I guess. I think if China banned bitcoin mining in their country surely it will have a big effect on the supply in the market a lot of bitcoin miners leave in china. Making for sure the bitcoin market price to increase also a lot of company in china is also associated in bitcoin technology so I doubt if this is going to happen even china is a successful country it still supports its Chinese investors and company.

Why it going to collapse? is the china was the one who can mine bitcoin? I think it can cause to reduce the mining percentage everyday but other country can do also mining so we can recover it until we mined all the bitcoin.

Basically mining could be done best with places that is having a very low electricity cost. In a sense where China bans Mining, it should be based on the geographical location of the mining sites. Most of the preferable sites are those located in icy fields, they can move their mining facilities to ensure that they can mine cryptocurrency and bitcoin much more efficiently. So far, I couldn't see the concrete reason why they need to ban mining.

It's very possible that Bitcoin price and network will take some impact once China ban Bitcoin mining since they are consider to be one of the worlds largest mining farms, but I bet that the effect will not last too long because miners will just shift to a new country that is Bitcoin friendly to continue doing their business. I have read on some articles that the countries like Canada, Switzerland and United States will be the best option for Chinese miners.

If China look forward on banning bitcoin then it will surely have a great impact on btc prices as the network will be disturbed due to china being center of bitcoin mining.But the miners will not stop working due to profits and will shift to other ways or other big companies will take oppurtunity to break this monolpoly and enter mining business.So we will have to wait for that moment.

As right now China is thinking of creating their own coin, so it means that they wont stop mining but they can regulate it and make more strict restriction so that illegal usage of power in mining wont work

We already heard that news before, but look at the price of Bitcoin, still there's no much effect with their announcement of banning Bitcoin, as on the other side of  story, Chinas government itself are the one investing and doing mining, they wanted to just keep it but they already know the benefit and advantage of Bitcoin.

They tried but they have not succeeded, china controls 70 percent off mining in the world, so they have so much influence on mining, if china bans it now, the Chinese people would be finding it hard to freely mine bitcoin and other coins that are mineable, and to move the mining machine out of the country would be difficult because their custom would really want to frustrate such miner.

This will surely make these coins to start becoming quite more scare, though the more the coin becomes scarce, the more the value will appreciate, but we cannot completely keep miners out of the market, and the remaining miners around the globe would not be enough to really satisfy the need of the community generally for these coins, so we need china to have full support.

When china gets their filthy hands on something, they always ruin it. Besides, it doesn't make a lick of sense to waste so much energy. It's ludicrous, egregious, preposterous.

Its only speculations and probably its quite impossible that they will ban bitcoin mining. They have benefited to it in many years and its ridiculous if they will ban it directly. Many countries are very interested about it and if they do ban bitcoin mining its their big loss. They must be ready if they do the ban.

The title says bitcoin mining so it only includes the mining of bitcoins. Mining anything else there is no law against or anything. Yes, the illegal use was not really illegal it was more of taking advantage of a situation that was never meant to work if people require such high amounts of power. Keeping things normal is fine so that is why that worked for a long time. I am surprised they were able to mine as much as they were for so long without anything being done.

China owns a large span of Bitcoin miners. They have approximately 70% of hash power I supposed. Though if they were to ban it, it would probably slowing down transactions, and as well it will increase mining decentralization. In addition China would be able to conserve a lot of electricity 'cause for about approximately of 70% of hash power are in China they got more than half of the world's total hash power right there. Though the bills they are receiving in return of allowing it would just be cut-off.

I agree, many bitcoin miners are in china and most of them are a richer. if they do that it will affect more there businesses and other company's that starting to use blockchain and crypto currency. and you are correct that china had benefit on bitcoin mining in several years. they really think about it well before they do. or it may cause any trouble on its users. but we will see it in their next steps. it is not easy to do this for no reason.

It does not make sense for government to have even thought of banning mining in the first time, when it had not negative effect on them. I know that when it comes to financial strength, china is already great, but they need to keep it up by allowing some of these projects that would help more of their economy and also help their lending strength to other countries.

That is in the past anyway, I don’t think that they are still planning on doing so because they are also working on their own cryptocurrency, which they will need miners a lot to be able to meet up with the number of coins that needs to be mined for their citizens to be able to use it for whatever reason they want them to use it for. I think now, they are going to be supporting them a lot.

Nothing will be changed. Bitcoin is the world cryptocurrency, and even if China bans its mining, it will not affect the other market. As soon as I know, Chinese guys manage to deal with all activities that refer to cryptocurrencies now (including mining and cloud mining). Hope, soon everybody will understand that the BTC ban will not stop it.

So I guess we need to locked this thread?

Chinese Agency Scraps Plan to Eliminate Bitcoin Mining Industry (https://www.coindesk.com/chinese-agency-scraps-plan-to-eliminate-bitcoin-mining-industry).

No more "what if" now, the Chinese government has already changed its stance.

Mining is the backbone to the entire network of bitcoin. Even now the contribution of China in mining is very big, but if something happens surely someone else will take responsibility and continue to mine. It is same as a ban of bitcoin from a country. Just because a country banned there won't be big impact on the market of bitcoin. Maybe there'll be small level of crash which will get to the normal pace of functioning in a short.

China have eliminate bitcoin mining project after bitcoin banned as legal transaction in china last three year ago, not bitcoin mining still exist in China will be banned because give bad reputation of bitcoin and altcoin price, make government not good with public because they can give solution for their people.

LOL.  I'm not a big fan of China, either, but it mostly has to do with their culture of counterfeiting American goods.  I could care less what they do on their own soil, but that affects our economy and it's built into their way of life.

There was an article floating around here the other day saying that China wasn't going to go through with the mining ban, and I think that's a good thing.  Chinese citizens ought to have the freedom to mine if they want to and the government should just fuck off.

But even if the ban did go through, I would imagine that those Chinese miners would migrate to a country nearby that was friendly to miners.  I can't imagine that they would just give it up.  Can Chinese citizens move freely to other countries?  I know they're a communist country and sometimes they have harsh laws about that.

Bumping this interesting year old thread to see if anything has changed.  Appears China miners continues to have the majority of the hash power (~65%) and currently China continues to be permissive of bitcoin mining. However, China's own central bank digital currency (CBDC) is gathering momentum. My current question is that as China rolls out its CBDC is there a risk of China making mining of bitcoins illegal since they might (incorrectly IMHO) view bitcoin as some kind of competition? 

If so what would be the short term and long term ramifications if the China's miners were turned off overnight? IMHO short term there might be a negative knee-jerk reaction, but long term the decentralized nature of bitcoin should accommodate any major shift like that.  Would such a shift make a 51% attack actually possible?  Thoughts?

A couple of related articles as FYI

https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-bitcoin-holders-worry-about-chinese-control-of-the-mining-network  May 1, 2020

https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-s-leadership-in-the-bitcoin-mining-industry-will-be-challenged    Nov 14, 2020

Not sure if this is going to happen, even though there have been several talks about bitcoin mining getting banned in China, but if it ever happens, it will be really devastating on one end cause lesser bitcoins will be mined and added to the market, that will cause scarcity of bitcoins and good on the other hand it will increase the price of bitcoin, cause with little or no supply the holders will refuse to sell at lower prices, thus there will be a spike in bitcoin price,although a few mining companies will be able to go out and establish an another  enterprise in another country, the smaller ones will be stuck there and they will eventually quit mining since its been prohibited by the government .

Nothing will happen. Several times we've seen about the banning of bitcoin mining in China. At occasions on inspection about the disturbance in the economy bitcoin mining will be stated as a reason. Later the news fades, and mining won't be stopped by the government or the owners. Regularly there is more and more advanced mining equipments manufactured. China holding majority of the miners is also an advantage for them. If China goes against bitcoin mining, and people stops it automatically someone from other countries will take the chance and starts mining. So, at any cost the network won't get disturbed.

You can never be sure with the government in China. They can prohibit things, but they can also revert to this decision after a while. And then they can even offer it. I think that bitcoin and the mining around it will never really be accepted by the whole of society. Banks and government lose a lot of power and have little influence and control over transactions. That is why they are vehemently against it, including all the affiliated processes related to it.

It is unpredictable how China's decision regarding bitcoin, two or three years ago China became the foremost country supporting bitcoin as a legal transaction tool, but suddenly they banned bitcoin as a means of transaction, even many ICO coins were banned in China at that time. However, one year ago, the president of China again made a controversial statement about bitcoin as a good transaction tool today, this has caused us to be more confused by China's decision about bitcoin currency, whether to legalize or just their game. It is unpredictable how bitcoin is going in China at this time, because at any time the decisions made by the Chinese government can just change and cause some investors to be unprepared if things happen that cause bitcoin to drop in price.