Bitcoin Forum

If you recall back months ago, news outlets were touting headlines regarding China having a 0% share of the global hashrate.

https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/10/18/bitcoin-mining-china-hashrate/ (https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/10/18/bitcoin-mining-china-hashrate/)
https://maxbit.cc/bitcoin-mining-china-now-has-0-hashrate/ (https://maxbit.cc/bitcoin-mining-china-now-has-0-hashrate/)
https://coindesk.cc/bitcoin-mining-china-now-has-0-hashrate-50346.html (https://coindesk.cc/bitcoin-mining-china-now-has-0-hashrate-50346.html)

Even the University of Cambridge's Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index shows that China is not mining anything.

https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map (https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map)

When I had first heard this news I was quite skeptical. I just couldn't believe that there was nobody mining bitcoin within China's borders.

Data from a Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 estimates an average of 109,000 bitcoin mining IP addresses active daily in China. This is a whole lot more than zero. The miners that remain, though, are smaller-scale projects that did not find it feasible to just pick up and leave. They did not have the luxury of packing up on a helicopter and shipping their operation to Kazakhstan as did many of the larger-scale miners did.

The same cybersecurity company also stated that as much as 20% of the world’s bitcoin miners are estimated to still operate within China. The provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Shandong are where the majority of these miners reside. Or at least that's where the connections are being made from. I struggle to imagine the amount of hoops such operators would have to jump through to ensure a safe operation.

The report states that many of the miners are able to take advantage of their small size and spread out their operation across multiple sites to ensure none of them stand out from the others. They are also using electricity sources not connected to the country's grid such as dams. Furthermore, miners have to work with foreign mining pools willing to sign them up despite the ban.

This goes to show you there is absolutely nothing anyone/anything can do to keep people from participating in our decentralized network.

Sources:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/E3MzWQ-XT55wIC7S8FYD7w (https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/E3MzWQ-XT55wIC7S8FYD7w)
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/chinas-underground-bitcoin-miners-.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/chinas-underground-bitcoin-miners-.html)

In fact there are still hashrates in China but we can identify exactly what the total hashrate from China is.

CBECI writes clearly about their methodology to collect data with 3 big assumptions. https://ccaf.io/cbeci/mining_map/methodology

Many assumptions mean data you got can be inaccurate. Chinese miners can simply keep mining in small mining farms, at home and switch their IPs to other nations, connect to other mining pools, etc. We can not determine how many miners like that.

I don't have data for it too but I don't believe total hashrate from China is absolutely zero.

Back then, when these numbers first came out, I've told that the IPs can be spoofed and the "others" can be anything (and it's big).
That "Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index" has so much potential for being inaccurate it practically misleads everybody.

So indeed, I never believed China's hash rate dropped to 0.


On the other hand, it does show that the bulk of miners have moved or hide their tracks, hence there's no official mining in China, hence their political declarations should have low impact in bitcoin's price and evolution (unless they're unban it again, of course).

There are a lot of opinions in the other topic that may worth reading: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365501.0

You have a point, but eventually, it'll get close to the number shown in the subject field ^{[if everything remains the same, it's inevitable]}... FYI, I'm not referring to issues concerning "dry season", instead I'm talking about the huge risk that it has when it comes to not getting caught ^{[on the last article, Ben mentioned he got lucky once before... In other words, all it takes to stop such operations is a single unexpected visit, as opposed to a phone call]}.

So, how come Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 can guess there are 109,000 bitcoin mining IP addresses active and the Chinese government, authoritarian as it is, does nothing?

I understand that most will be trying to camouflage via vpn or Tor but if that company can do that estimate I find it hard to believe that the Chinese government can't do the same and act accordingly.

Of course, this is quite possible and what is happening right now with some remaining miners still operating within China. These small-scale miners have the ways and means to evade the detection of the government and yes they are so willing to play hide and seek with the strict and control-freak government of China. Not unless China will decide to station a police in every family or household, nothing can really stop these miners from continually doing a profitable Bitcoin mining away from the prying eyes of their own government which already said a big NO to crypto mining months ago.

An average of 109,000 bitcoin mining IP addresses active daily in China? This is quite an astonishing number. How do they survive, I mean, to protect themselves from official inspection?
I thought China has left for good.

I already called bullshit (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365501.msg58230573#msg58230573) on the numbers produced by these guys at Cambridge a couple of months ago. Interestingly enough some people didn't want to have an open mind and realize that most of the statistics reported about bitcoin has always been largely flawed.
Similarly the 109,000 bitcoin mining IP addresses could also be challenged. But one thing is certain, there is still some small but considerable amount of hashrate coming from China.

Possibly because Chinese government is not this big evil dictatorship as it is portrayed. It is just as evil as other governments in any other country, which means they aren't raiding people's home every day for mining bitcoin. They basically don't care. They just didn't want big mining farms in their country.

There are no large-scale mining companies because they need stability, but the policy prevents them from mining legally in China, so they are currently small-scale private mining farms.

I expect that some degree of corruption/protectionism does exist and if one has the proper "friends" his business is not harmed, even if it was declared illegal, as long as the business is not too big and doesn't draw too much attention.

Then, as others said, there may be some very small fish here and there which may costs more effort than the "benefit" of bringing them to "justice".

I wouldn't read too much in to this kind of thing. A random security company can find 109,000 of these miners, and CNBC can find a couple to interview, but the Chinese government can't track them down? Please.

What we know: China banned bitcoin for the 9000th time, the hashrate dipped for a few months, and has recovered back to higher levels than previously. It doesn't actually matter if China have 0% or 20% of the hashrate at this point.

What I suspect is going on: China are gearing up to ban bitcoin for the 9001st time, but before that happens, they need to make everyone think that this time it will actually matter. So lets start throwing out some articles about how China still have over 100,000 miners, or the big Chinese whales which are going to sell everything after this ban, or some other such nonsense.

Those numbers show us when the government works, it doesn't always be perfect for there are tendencies such as this one where people still can do what they want despite tight policies by their government and while China is not safe from that, the other countries are also included. Wherever those miners, I truly appreciate their hard works because no matter the government wanted to kick them out, they still find some way to stay.

Going over the Google Translation (*) for the first source provided in the OP, it seems that the 360 Enterprise Security Group (that’s what Google translates the company’s name to, although one specific instance even throws "Government" after the 360, but I figure it also should bear an "and"), has a track record of working in anti-mining, amongst other fields. The article goes on to saying:

The information is not just aggregate assessment information, but rather more, bears an operational intent:

There could be some flaws in the translation, but it seems that their realized goal is to create a monitoring system to snitch on potential miners. Accuracy is secondary, I figure, once the list gets into the hands of the Government there …

(*) https://mp-weixin-qq-com.translate.goog/s/E3MzWQ-XT55wIC7S8FYD7w?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en

The Chinese authorities will do something about it,sooner or later.
China has a totalitarian regime,but that doesn't mean that the government is all mighty and can do whatever it wants-like shutting down 109K Bitcoin miners in a week or two.
I guess that tracking and shutting down all those miners will be a slow process.
What do you mean by "China left for good"?I have nothing against the crypto miners located there.
The Chinese miners aren't the ones creating the problems.
The Chinese government was the main cause for FUD.

I never considered anything Bitcoinrelated coming from University of Cambridge to be reliable even before this.
We know that some big mining pools are from China (Antpool, ViaBTC, Binance pool, etc.) and I doubt they really removed all their asic miners from China.

Chinese government is known for their monitoring of every aspect of their citizens, so we can understand why they are probably preparing to open hunting season for anyone mining Bitcoin.
Problem is that I think rest of the world is trying to follow China more and more with this totalitarian control system.

Oh no, does that mean Bitcoin is still a dirty coal-powered industry run by a communist-dictatorial lobby that is destroying the environment for profit? Will Mr.Mars now re-create some of his famous tweets in which he will say again that he will not use Bitcoin because it is not environmentally friendly?

We are doomed, no new ATH and Lambos - let someone tell PlanB that S2F has completely failed :o

The total number of full nodes is estimated to be around 100k or even less, so either I'm missing something, or there's something wrong with this research.

I don't doubt that China's hashrate is not literally zero, but China probably lost 99% of its hashrate, maybe even more, so I wouldn't say that miners have won. Yes, government can never fully stop Bitcoin, but Bitcoin needs a lot of PoW to secure the current transaction volume, and it will only grow, and we can't get this PoW without large farms that are vulnerable to being shut down by government.

I think the more important point is that China has progressively stopped Bitcoin access over time. First it went from "this is profitable to a small part of the Chinese economy and we can keep an eye on it", to "we have energy shortages in other sectors so need to stop this activity" to "Bitcoin might actually be bad for the environment and also give dissidents an ability to evade Chinese government repression". Just like how it is banned in Russia - there will be small scale operations, but it is nowhere near the industrial scale utilizing the entire energy from small power plants to run an operation type mining. The Chinese authorities are pretty good at suppressing internet activity so if they decide to have a crackdown in future then all these small scale miners will be wiped out because it's illegal - there may have been moments in time when the number was much lower as people were scared of the consequences.

You don't need to run a full node to mine bitcoin (sadly). Almost all bitcoin miners connect to a mining pool that runs a full node on their behalf. That means 100k individual miners could connect to a single pool that represents 1 node.

Luckily the world has almost 200 countries, many of which have already accepted bitcoin with open arms.

OP, your title can also be, “NO, a Totalitarian Government can’t censor Bitcoin miners”. 8)

Give the people enough incentives, and they will do anything to be incentivized. The Chinese government’s ban merely made it more difficult for themselves.

The math simply doesn't hold the 20%.
If at the time of the article you would have 20% of the hash rate still in China and you would count the whole drop of 100 exahash obviously on the hashrate fleeing China it would mean that before the April events China would have had more than 82%of the global hashrate, single already at that point Foundry and Mara had 9% combined it would have put the entire world at the rest of home miners in US  ar around 5-7%. Which would contradict all other theories about mining happening from Australia to Iran to Russia and Canada.

It one way to the other, either claim that before the ban China has way less than the current 10% or it had more than 80%, there is no way the scenario would hold otherwise.

Besides, the article is before the DNS event which saw pools switching off their servers in China and moving their domains, and that was at the surface, probably every IP that was detected at that time inside the country is already on the long list of investigations.
And yet again the numbers would not match with the drop, it's simple as this!

Not saying that the numbers are zero, but 20% of the global hash rate? With the rainy season over and coal still over way over 100$, the government cracking on you and messing with everything, no you won't have 20%! 5% is doable, 20 is fantasy.


If each of that IP would have more than 3 S19J behind it, just 3 miners per IP!  would have more than 20% of the hashrate.

 

I am actually very curious to know what "other" source of electricity ..can generate enough power to run a small Bitcoin mining farm. You did say that they are not using the national grid, so it must be Solar or Wind or something similar.  ::)

I think these miners are actually still on the national grid, but they are just hidden behind other legal operations. (It will not be too difficult to hide a few miners in a factory that are manufacturing something else)  ;)

It's hydropower in 99% of the cases.
It could be also gas flaring or geothermal but I've never heard of the first being used in China and the setup for the second is expensive as f.
China has built in the past thousands, actually, tens of thousands of dams from huge ones to small capacity ones, especially in Sichuan, arriving at 100GW capacity, to understand this France has 130 GW in total.  ;D
Most of them were never connected to the grid or in the big clamp down on illegal dams (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hydropower-idUSKCN1LF2RG) if not blown up they were disconnected from it and either went up for sale or they were selling energy to businesses that could afford to move and operate next to the dam.

And no, nobody mines completely off-grid with only solar or wind, unless you like losing money and receiving ROI after a decade.

Since they banned bitcoin trading and mining in their country we expect to see china totally stopped mining and not even mining 0 percent while there are still many bitcoin miners in China and they mine bitcoin illegally however the Chinese government said they will try to detect and find the illegal bitcoin miners many times but there is still the chance the theory to say the Chinese government is mining bitcoin itself anonymously while they banned it for people which is not really surprising for a government like china because they will do anything for the government economics. Generally, in my own idea, the mining power will never be 0 percent in China, no matter who reported it.

It doesn't though. There is no direct link between the amount of hashrate we have and the amount of transactions being processed. After significant difficulty adjustments, we could process the same number of transactions with a single person mining on a single GPU, if we wanted to.

In terms of remaining secure, we still have plenty more hashrate than we need. The hashrate dropped by over 50% earlier this year, and there was not even a suggestion of a hint of a 51% attack. As recently as 2018 the hashrate was <10% of what it is now, and we were never 51% attacked then either.

I meant monetary volume, not transaction count, should have written it more explicitly.

It's true that there's a lot of wiggle room for hashrate before it starts impacting security, but the threat of 51% attacks shouldn't be underestimated, and the bigger Bitcoin becomes, the more reasons to attack it the people who don't want it succeed have.

It's not realistic now or in the near future, but if more countries ban mining like China did, and miners decide to quit instead of moving to other countries, then the attack could become more feasible.

It's hard to believe for me no one from China is involved with Bitcoin mining. The government would prevent big companies from mining. But it's quite impossible to prevent every small miner even individual miners as well. Also China many times banned Bitcoin before and after a few days seems they use it back. It's called China brain actually. I am just wondering where competitors countries adapting Bitcoin here China banned that. However, though government stop all official mining farms, but can't stop investing in entrepreneurs who are still mining Bitcoin IMO.

It's not legal there anymore which does mean that at the end of the day you cannot sit down and talk about how people are still mining illegally. That's the whole point of decentralized system, the government can never control it and therefore instead of banning they should work on actually regulating it profitably for everyone!! This is not a joke and there are people whose life are dependent upon bitcoins/mining or something related to cryptocurrencies, they won't really sell everything and move to other countries. But at the end of the day the government does not have a control over them, if they did, we won't have this news all together, A failed system that's what it is. Let us take this as a strong example that the government can try but can barely control bitcoins.

As in any place, there are going to be clandestine miners. Of course they cannot be "huge" anymore, since the State can seize everything and put them to prison if caught.

I bet some even use satellite links, a practice that is absolutely forbidden there, so they would need to hide it well. Bitcoin itself is illegal right? And yet, some people will accept it and pay with it, same thing, covering their tracks as best as they can.

I remember doubting the Cambridge data about Chinese miners because they looked basically at people who mine openly, and there was always a possibility that they didn't capture those who were trying to hide their mining farms. 109,000 addresses sounds very significant, compared to zero, but does it allow getting accurate hashrate estimates? How accurate is the 20% estimate, and is it possible to confirm or disprove it? So for me, nothing changes. China used to be the center of mining activities. I don't believe it's still playing such a crucial part. But I also never thought all mining stopped in China, so I'm not surprised that there's some underground activity.

oh you and your assumptions, guestimates. maybe you should keep referencing the cambridge sites link that has them same terminology in their explanations.

the dip in the hashrate was not just china taking asics offline. it was also america turning rigs offline when the first ATH price correction went below the profitable amount to keep mining. and also the upgrading of asics from s9 to s19pro where less asics were needed to run. as well as attempts to try and bring the difficulty down on purpose.

so atleast try to think of the other factors you ignored in your guestimates and assumptions. the same as what cambridge forget to do. but atleast they can admit to using guestimates and assumptions.

but it is funny, thinking that your maths must mean china must have had 82%, simply because you think the whole 100ex drop was "china".. you should be a comedian, im always laughing at the stuff you say.

..
but lets give you some positives.
3 years ago you thought it was impossible to have thousands of dams upstream from a megadam. you thought it would be a "perpetual energy machine" if such were true, or ever to happen... you literally thought it was an impossible thing
 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4689016.msg45531108#msg45531108
.. well 3 years later your now atleast admitting or realising that there are like 25000 dams upstream from government superdams.  so +1 for learning. even if it took you 3 years to realise it.

in the recent year you thought cambridge had proof that there was 0% mining in china.
you did quote their explanation, even though the explanation page had words like "guestimate" "assumption". which you ignored. .. but now in this topic, you seem to be coming around to the idea to accept that not all mining in china has gone..
so another +1 for taking another step forward.

.. but seeing as it takes you 1-3 years to break out of the pains you cause for yourself. maybe you should stick to comedy

Oh the guy who doesn't understand how the reward from a block is split thinks he can lecture me again...

So in the mind of franky1 the hashrate dropped from 180 exa to 90exa because of the price drop from 60k to 30k , of course ignoring the simple fact that there were 140exa of hash power mining when the price was 10k.
How in the world would be possible to have 140 exahash of gear mining when the profitability was 8 cents per TH/s but you would have poeple dropping from the network in April-May when the profitability was 30 cents per TH/s, probably in Reverso World that might be a thing.
But anyhow, don't answer, you might debunk math and let the world know that 30 is smaller than 8 and 90 is larger than 140.


You might need to get that checked up, have all the pet hospitals closed around you because of covid?

oh stompix. need it take another 1-3 years for you to have another lightbulb moment and realise?

let me try to make it simple

thats just 2 other factors you YET AGAIN forgot, even when i just said you forget other factors.
here are some more

when the price is too low for america to mine. that leaves more space for china to mine. the ratio of % of america:china mining changes.
when america switch off, china mine more, when america switch on china mine less.

china is not on a fixed % of mining all month,year,decade even during the times of no political risk to mining. it does vary month to month.

there are even times where all miners power down a bit when the difficulty is going up too much per fortnight.
there are times where some miners power down when the price is too low. and too many miners mine when the price is high(causing a difficulty jump) which then causes them to power down to re adjust and not cause another difficulty jump

you need to look into many factors at play and not ASSUME its all "china"


..
oh and your 8cents/THs.. 30cent/THs bad math...

an asic is 110ths pulling 3.25kwh
china electric being 4cent/kwh...
so 110thash/s=13cent AN HOUR for 396000TH in that hour

which is simple math
0.00003283cent per THs to break even.

so its not 8 cent per TH a second in any possible way
..
but you made me laugh. you thought it cost 8 cent a second per terrahash

by the way. i dont debunk math. i love math. i debunk YOU for your lack of math. YOUR lack of including all the variables in math, YOUR assumptions and guestimates that do not include full understanding of what goes into a math problem

if it were 8cent per THs
then the 160,000,000th/s network rate
would be 96000000000th/block(~600 seconds)
which would be $7,680,000,000 per block
which would be $1,228,800,000 per btc cost to mine

sorry but your math is off by millions

Yeah right, so you upgrade by cutting half of the hashrate
How would that even work in the real world???????


Stop with the Koolaid, both American and Chinese miners are going to die laughing hearing you
And what about Iranian, Canadian, Australian, Russian miners, do they come together every time and decide quotas?

Price too low for America, like there is an American general tariff and a Chinese tariff, Marathon main site mines at 2.8 cents per kwh, Core has a one at 3.5 cents and Hive an average of ~4.5, where is the price that America shuts down, Canada does a flip flop, China runs 100 meters and India drinks a Manhattan?   ;D
You live in a fantasy world where you think of miners like colored lego blocks.


And now you just murdered your own twisted logic with finally something that makes sense!
So why did the hashrate not drop when the income was 10 cents per TH/s but dropped when it was 30 cents per TH/s?
From January 2020 the profitability dropped from 15 to nearly 7 cents, yet the hashrate went up, then suddenly out of the blue at exactly 37cents miners decided to quit, in the exact week of China's ban announcement.
But of course, for you it makes perfect sense.


Stop talking about things you don't have a clue what they are.
Go and visit viabtc for change and check what income per TH/s is, but hey probably the owners of viabtc and antpool are morons, you know better.
Also, you might redo that calculation about that 0.00003283 cent , you're the first guy that multiplies hashes per hour with seconds while keeping the hourly consumption, start from here
https://www.viabtc.net/tools/calculator
You're not welcome anyhow!

Oh wait, franky
Did you actually calculate income per TH per second?  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
My god...there aren't enough facepalms in the world for this...
This is pure gold, I need to have this framed on the fireplace!

if you are using 1.3kwh for just 13thash (s9)
but then you upgrade to use just 3.25kw for 110thash (s19)

you no longer need 8x s9 asics at a cost of 10.4kw (40cent electric an hour) for ~104th
you can just run 1x s19pro asic at a cost of 3.25kw (13cent electric an hour) for 110th

and save yourself 27cents. meaning you dont need to run extra rigs or increase hashrate to be profitable. you are instead already making 3x profit by just having the same hashrate, due to the upgrade saving you money at the cost end of the equation..
resulting in you not needing to mine as much sats per block to break even.

infact if you exponentiate it out
you no longer need 80 s9 asics at a cost of 104kw ($4 electric an hour)
you can just run 10 s19pro asic at a cost of 32.5kw ($1.30 electric an hour)

and because your costs are now a third of what they were(3x profit). you can then take 2/3's of your s19's offline. and still break even

knowing the benefit of lowering your hashrate because the profits are there to allow you to lower your hashrate, means your not the one shooting yourself in the foot by over-mining to cause difficulty jumps that can hurt you later.

so you know you can go down to 3-4 asics and still profit. and so instead of 10 s19's running. you only put 5-6 asics running to reduce the risks of difficulty jumps, and infact cause a difficulty decline. which HELPS YOU EVEN MORE, next difficulty period..

maybe just maybe. some day. maybe it be 1 or 3 years.. but maybe you might come to the realisation as to why at no time has the hashrate been a straight line. perpetually rising. you might come to some conclusions about the wiggles and the dips in hashrate. and maybe if your a good boy and learn your lessons you might factor in more reasons for it. regular changes that dont make it a straight line of linear growth

Side note to all of this. I have a small pool I run for a couple of oddball scrypt coins. We are talking 5 distinct miners on a busy day and I'm one of them.
I still see IPs originating from China coming into the pool at times. It's either an ancient USB stick miner or a few gridseed orbs or a bunch of faster graphics cards. Can't tell what, but it's still there.
So China mining not totally dead.

-Dave

Of course, a government ban cannot completely destroy mining in a country, especially one as big as China. There will always be people who will violate this ban. Moreover, I do not see that it will be adopted in the form of a law with sanctions for its violation. But nevertheless, there is no official cryptocurrency mining activity in China. The state still has a very strong influence on cryptocurrency.
This week, the Winter Olympics are already opening in China, where they promise to officially launch the digital yuan. Some time after that, a review of the decision regarding the ban on cryptocurrencies is possible there.

i have read that anyone can download the DCEP/CBDC android app of China this Olympic which anyone can also use it. i tried it on playstore.

i really think china will not abandon cryptocurrency, they may just say to the media that they ban mining but i doubt the government will just leave it to the world when they can also take advantage of the wealth distribution. it'd be fun to see XI Jinping's government itself is mining like Bukele and Xi also challenging IMF.  :D

the most important thing is that he no longer has power over bitcoin, they don't have many miners anymore because they themselves sent all miners away, this is very good for bitcoin, I'm just afraid that later miners will start to focus on another country, I hope that this time the miners are scattered

The majority of Chinese miners had to move due to the government pressure. China definitely doesn’t have 0% of the hashrate though, the remaining miners there just went underground & I don’t blame them. I would hate to live in a communist country like China.

I guess only the big ones have suspended their operations and relocated, while the little ones are still in the game and still use some private hydropower sources (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hydropower-idUSKBN1XN0ES) that keep them off the radar in some way. It is estimated that one-third of hydropower plants are small power plants with a capacity of less than 50 megawatts.

I don't know where you live, but a good part of the communist atmosphere has moved far to the west, people on the streets are beaten by police only because they have a different (critical opinion), and soon they will pay fines if they are not vaccinated. I’ve watched a few international documentaries about China in recent months, and not everything is exactly as it seems at first glance.

I am on the side that some are mining under the radar of their government. Only those big mining facilities are shutdown because it is easy to see their operation. And for those who are using their renewable energy source, they can operate silently if they know how to go around their government rules and protocols.

This article was written late last year - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/chinas-underground-bitcoin-miners-.html, and it mentioned that about 20% of the worldwide btc network remains in China. And they presented that some are indeed mining underground just like Ben in the story.