Bitcoin Forum

65% of Global Bitcoin Hashrate Concentrated in China. Half of the country’s hash rate is produced in just one place, the autonomous Xinjiang region, which makes up 35.76% of the global total. Can bitcoin be banned there and, if so, will it effect the crypto market?

I don't think it'd be all too negative, miners would benefit from this tbh. Also it's interesting to see merged mining platforms benefiting from over 50%, saw that rootstock recently got to like 60 something percent, that's pretty great! I also don't think china will outright ban crypto, it's not on their best interest

I have not research about your post and Xinjiang. Mining is a business, they pay taxes and pay for electricity, if Xinjiang is an autonomous region it means the authority of Mainland do not get to interfere in their economic activities but military protection,  I understand is mainly i mainland that we hear the government coming for bitcoin traders and all of that. Even though there have been several conflicting report in the past of the Chinese government banning bitcoin, this has ever stop the growth and advancement of bitcoin and the entirely space. China knows the next financial war room is digital currency and they are now well positioned develop blockchain projects. Don't be moved, the future of crypto currency is brighter than we can currently comprehend now.

Actually, Bitcoin was already ban there in the past multiple and then they allow it again. So the answer to your question is a big YES. But even if Bitcoin will ban again in china. It will not destroy it since it's DECENTRALIZED which no one can stop it even government. So if ever they lose the majority of hash rate. I believe so crypto friendly country will step up and take over there role. Or else those bitcoin mining company from china will change location which they actually do.

If they get closed in some way all it will happen is that the hashrate will drop then the difficultly will be readjusted and the network will be a bit more decentralized. There will be impact on the price for sure, but after some time it will stabilize again.
This is how I see it if such thing happens.

Although it is never known what China can decide next when it comes to BTC, I think there is no reason to ban crypto mining for a few simple reasons. First of all, it is a profitable business that includes the purchase of surplus electricity, the sale of mined BTC, and the business with mining devices manufactured in China. All of this is a closed circuit in which China has complete control and which brings profit.

It would be interesting to know what share of all this is in their GDP, just for the sake of perhaps better understanding how important the whole thing is to them and whether there would be any significant financial loss if at some point they decided to shut down the whole thing.

If a BTC mining ban happens,all the companies that produce mining hardware will have to shut down,which will cause unemployment.All the mining facilities located in Xinjiang will have to close too,which will cause more unemployment.The economy of China won't be in such great shape,since the global corona recession(or maybe depression) is a fact.Solutions that increase the unemployment won't be very popular.
Anyway,I think that the Chinese will rather use somehow their advantage in BTC mining,for some hidden purposes,instead of completely destroying it.

I also am not surprised as 51% of the hashrate has been there for quite some time now.The fact that has increased to 65% is because of the fact that many miners even big farms in US and Europe were very disappointed when the price of bitcoin started to fall after end of 2017 and the difficulty in bitcoin network started to increase which made them abandon this business.

I think the situation was always like this with China having more than 50% power of the hash rate so I don't know if things will settle down a little and if China will ban mining Bitcoin (which I doubt it ever happen ) but the balance must be done in some way as it would be nice for some other countries to install big mining farms. If a balance won't come , China will own more than 75% of hash power in the next years.

They banned it for quite some time now, it will not be a surprise if they will but yet they still mine even right now. If hash rate goes down it will for sure affect Bitcoin and it will have a domino effect as well all on crypto sphere.

I think that has negative effect if they have 1/3 of all the hashrate, we're talking about China at all they are troll sometimes like announcing a ban then later on it will be lifted again.

its good business as we can see BTC price keeps growing and they have cheap electricity so even for solo miners i guess can just join a pool to make it his business in Xinjiang. if this place is really an autonomous then the mainland government will not be able to interfere with mining business. government will only collect tax from their region and they can go on. it wouldn't mean centralization still even if its 75%.

lets first clarify one term here.
by "concentrated" OP means to say that there are mining pools in China that a lot of moners from all around the world, most of which are NOT in China connect to.
now it is a very different view that is not FUD anymore.
to answer the question asked in OP, it has no effects on bitcoin. a mining pool is simply a server that can be moved to elsewhere. and majority of miners don't live in China to be under Chinese law.
not to mention that for 11 years there has been the FUD about "banning bitcoin" and they never did it. in fact China accepted bitcoin a long time ago.

We can't do nothing about it, it is decentralized after all, we could not do a thing against it if that is what Chinese people want to do, to mine then it is other's country thing if they should have a large mining farms in order to achieve the balance but I doubt it is happening. One factor why most of the hashrate is coming from China is because their electricity rate is low, if I would compare it to our electricity rate here it is 50% less than what China is offering for their people, so that counts for another factor why most of Chinese is mining.

Big business should be flexible. Once China starts moving towards the ban, they'll just relocate their equipment. Of course, it'll take time and money, but big players have the necessary resources for that. But let's say something goes wrong and all those miners suddenly stop doing the job. Well, right now it could lead to halving being postponed a big, I guess, but within a short period of time the difficulty rate will adjust, and those who left would not matter. I agree, it's not completely unalarming that such kind of centralization is the case, but it's not the end of the world.

China already "banned" Bitcoin multiple times, and sometimes it caused noticeable panic, but nothing that could be measured in long term. Partly because those bans were never 100% serious, and partly because you can't stop Bitcoin by banning it in just one country, even if it has the majority of its hashpower - miners will just move somewhere else, and maybe it would even help to decentralize mining.

Again with numbers from you know what?
Lety's forget China owns everything debate and let's concentrate on the last part:
 

Ok, so Xinjiang holds half of it..then what do we do with Inner Mongolia, where Bitmain has its main mining facility in Ordos ?
And what do we do with Sichuan, that assumedly generates also more than half?
Sichuan generates over 50 percent of the total Bitcoin mining hash rate.
 (https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/electricity-shortage-forces-china-to-crackdown-on-crypto-mining/)

Oh, but wait, we have an article that claims (https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/12/11/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-mining-hash-rate-china-renewable-energy-blockchain/) 54% of all the global hash rate is situated in Sichuan

Since you didn't bother to link to the source here is it for the others reading it:
https://news.bitcoin.com/65-of-global-bitcoin-hashrate-concentrated-in-china/

And deep in the article, we find the source of the claims:


Wow, so data from 3 pools situated in China show that the majority of the hash rate originates in China.
This means that if 99% of the people entering a Walmart in Austin are Texans, 99% of Walmart's customers are from Texas.

Oh, and if you don't trust me, here is the disclaimer from the ones that made the study themselves:
https://cbeci.org/mining_map/methodology

If they ban mining in China then the rest (%35) will be securing the network instead... The network will keep working. It won't get affected by it. I don't see big deal. Actually that would even be a good thing which'll remove the Chinese centralization which you pointed out.

That's not a good indicator to judge that because in overall one company doesn't own 50% of all coins and if china owns that much in overall, then we have to keep in mind that their population is far more than for example whole european population.
Btw it will be interesting to know what will happen in china around this task. They wanted to ban bitcoin. Now europe and usa wants to get factories back from china. China left without bitcoin and factory industries will be in very bad situation (bitcoin won't have huge affect but it's source of income).

If the miners in China should be stopped, it's going to have an effect on Bitcoin and yes the price will likely drop when such a number of miners stop mining (65%). But that doesn't mean that the cryptocurrency is going to stop, nope, it will continue working because there will still be the remaining 35% from other countries that are still moving the cryptocurrency. And I believe that if such a thing should happen, other mining farms will try to get more equipment and be able to increase their power, that way it will boost things up again and it will go back to normal. But I am not expecting that to happen.

If you are in China you are not able to access to any exchanges as far as i understand and they have a firewall that prohibits their citizens to have the freedom which sites they access and there were rumors that they will forced these mining farms but there was no action taken by the government yet.

China might be having a majority hashrate compared to the rest of the world but if they ban mining then there are other mining farms around the world, for a slight moment we will experience some difficulty but once the mining difficult to adjusted everything will be back to normal.

In general, this state of affairs is not very good, because in theory, this could lead to an attack of 51 on Bitcoin. But on the other hand, the pools themselves will never agree to such actions, because they get huge profits from mining. The main thing is that the PRC government itself does not intervene.

Do you think that those 65% doesn't have a plan B? Of course they have and I'm sure they have some sort of fail over, or a business continuity plan in place in case their government shutdown bitcoin mining for good. It might take them time to set up everything outside of China and continue, but I'm sure there are more that are willing to take-over from them. Short term there will be a negative effect, but long term we are going to survived this kind of scenario.

For sure if bitcoin is banned in China and the miners quit it is going to affect the Bitcoin market. But that wouldn't mean the end for the Bitcoin ecosystem, there is just going to be a decline in price and as time goes on the remaining mining farms will be able to upgrade and catch up and things will get back to normal and that's it.

Although I don't really believe that the Chinese government will ban Bitcoin mining. They have tried to do that once but it didn't work and they left the miners to continue with their business. The only thing might be able to do is to ban the people from making use of Bitcoin and maybe miners will be affected in some ways.

Hash Rate is really really important when we talk about Bitcoins. We all know that Bitcoins is super secure ignoring the personal errors one can make .
Hash rate does determine how secure Bitcoins is , if it is banned there it will go down by 65% , but it is during the time of Halving and therefore it will go down by 65+15% , since many small miners are getting out .
80% !! Decrease would mean the market will die , but it would take a while for the hash rate to recover . But then again it will eventually all be fine , let's hope this does not happen.