[2021-07-14] Bitcoin mining ban an easy decision for China, says Bitmain EMEA pa

[zasad@]

Bitcoin mining ban an easy decision for China, says Bitmain EMEA partner
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-mining-ban-an-easy-decision-for-china-says-bitmain-emea-partner

“The easiest industry to reduce overnight was a gray area industry. Some 68,000 gigawatts of power was removed instantly from China just by saying no to Bitcoin mining.”

“Because these are older machines that were in a warehouse for many, many years and were just making 5%–10%, and they were on. But it doesn’t make commercial sense to now take those off and move them.”

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[stompix]

This is one of those articles that try to promote a business, the guy tries to picture why his business is going to succeed but as it happens one in a million, he actually says some interesting things, not 100% sure they are going to happen but still a well above 80% possibility, of course, depending on the price.

The value per machine might be $150–$200 at most, and it would take about the same amount of money per unit to relocate them. “It doesn’t make sense to do that,” he said, “That’s why I say half of what was on the network that we lost.”

Yeah, he is right about it, it's risky to grab that gear, transport it to a foreign country, and have it running, but if we're talking about 100-200$ it's gear that has already ROI, so from a miners' perspective it's either moving it or dumping it, leaving the cost of only transportation. That being said, the price will also play a role, it's of course not smart to buy for 400$ something that even at 4 cents per kWh will ROI in 200 days if it doesn't break down, not even mentioning the difficulty of going back up, but the whole things changes if the price goes up to 60-70. We've seen it before, gear that was sold at 100$ skyrocket over eBay to 800$ during the price spike.

On the other hand, this is bs:

The country is required to improve several areas, such as reducing its carbon footprint, to get funding from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank

China doesn't give a damn about that carbon footprint in reality, they use that just for show:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-coal-idUSKBN2A308U

Including decommissions, China’s coal-fired fleet capacity rose by a net 29.8 GW in 2020, even as the rest of the world made cuts of 17.2 GW, according to research released on Wednesday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a U.S. think tank, and the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). China approved the construction of a further 36.9 GW of coal-fired capacity last year, three times more than a year earlier, bringing the total under construction to 88.1 GW. It now has 247 GW of coal power under development, enough to supply the whole of Germany.

That means enough coal power stations under construction to support 5 blockchains.

[zasad@]

I honestly don’t know who to believe.
Have you read this post from a Chinese?
The real reason why China banned Bitcoin.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5347307.msg57372694#msg57372694

So this is just a way to lower the price of bitcoin and get the miners to take all the mining junk out of the country.
What will prevent China from allowing mining under full government control again?

[stompix]

I honestly don’t know who to believe.
Have you read this post from a Chinese?
The real reason why China banned Bitcoin.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5347307.msg57372694#msg57372694

That's a post from a random person who claims to be in China (he might be or he might be not) but who claims he knows why the CCP has done this and whoever really knows why the party does this is not going to spend time around this forum blurting all their secrets out.

What I have presented is true data, data everyone in the western world tries to ignore because the population would go nuts seeing who electricity prices go up for the sake of the planet while at the same time China is building coal powerplant after powerplant and enjoying cheap electricity for manufacturing. It also doesn't go well with imposing the green deal while China only claims to do it while not really taking any action.

You could of course believe China did this for some carbon neutrality thing or you could go over the list of powerplants under construction and check all those satellites' coordinates, those don't lie. It's pretty simple, China didn't like this industry, they didn't like the outcome of that mining accident and powercuts and realized they are subsidizing a lot of the power for something that maybe isn't getting those big returns, everyone claims. Let's wait and see how much other states get from miners and then we will have a better picture, remember that the profit miners make =/ what the state makes.

[bbc.reporter]

I honestly don’t know who to believe.
Have you read this post from a Chinese?
The real reason why China banned Bitcoin.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5347307.msg57372694#msg57372694

So this is just a way to lower the price of bitcoin and get the miners to take all the mining junk out of the country.
What will prevent China from allowing mining under full government control again?

Cointelegraph should confirm Phil Harvey’s statement where he said that China banned mining to reduce its carbon footprint to get funding from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. This might be false. I reckon China will never subject itself to what it does on other countries. I might be wrong, however, it is China that acts as an alternative for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Also, agree with @stompix. This article appears to be a paid for advertisement.

[Ozero]

I honestly don’t know who to believe.
Have you read this post from a Chinese?
The real reason why China banned Bitcoin.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5347307.msg57372694#msg57372694

So this is just a way to lower the price of bitcoin and get the miners to take all the mining junk out of the country.
What will prevent China from allowing mining under full government control again?

The Chinese government will no longer allow cryptocurrency miners to continue working. This is one of the urgent problems that required a solution before the release of their digitized yuan. On the one hand, now every government faces the problem of energy consumption. On the other hand, in connection with the already obvious and obvious climate change, the problem of stopping the production of energy from carbohydrate sources has been raised. Third, China is reaching a new level in financial relations with its digitized yuan and cryptocurrency will interfere with this. They do not take into account the opinion of other states at all. They are proud to go their own way.

[Vishnu.Reang]

The Chinese government will no longer allow cryptocurrency miners to continue working. This is one of the urgent problems that required a solution before the release of their digitized yuan. On the one hand, now every government faces the problem of energy consumption. On the other hand, in connection with the already obvious and obvious climate change, the problem of stopping the production of energy from carbohydrate sources has been raised. Third, China is reaching a new level in financial relations with its digitized yuan and cryptocurrency will interfere with this. They do not take into account the opinion of other states at all. They are proud to go their own way.

The Chinese government will tolerate Bitcoin as long as it doesn't interfere with the fiat based economy. But with Bitcoin being recognized as legal tender in at least some of the world nations, the equilibrium has changed. And this is problematic for countries where the national currency is heavily manipulated, such as China. Now the Chinese government has reached the conclusion that the harm that can be done by cryptocurrency adoption outweighs any potential benefits from allowing Bitcoin mining. This time they seems to be quite determined. 

[InvoKing]

Barely profitable mining operations will cease indefinitely in China but bigger farms will relocate to nearby countries or sell their rigs and buy newer and powerful miners and start their activities again in another country. China lost an opportunity to have some influence on bitcoin.

[kano]

Using the previous peak difficulty: 25046487590083.3 = 179.2925 EH/s

and ... ... if we said every miner was an S9 - no it's not so this is a way over estimate of power ...

If we also say an S9 is 14TH/s you get ... 179.2925 EH/s = 12.8 million miners.
If you also say 1.3kW per S9 you get ... 12.8M x 1.3kW = 16.6GW

So the maximum bitcoin has used across the entire planet is absolutely certainly less than 16.6GW ...

[WePiggy]

It might be worth considering that China is looking to lower it's carbon emissions and reduce pollution in it's country. One way to do this is eliminate excessive usage of electricity from coal from bitcoin mining. I would like to have seen China allowing green Bitcoin mining, perhaps it is something they will consider in the future - especially if geothermal mining in El Salvador, and solar mining in Texas takes off

[Ozero]

It might be worth considering that China is looking to lower it's carbon emissions and reduce pollution in it's country. One way to do this is eliminate excessive usage of electricity from coal from bitcoin mining. I would like to have seen China allowing green Bitcoin mining, perhaps it is something they will consider in the future - especially if geothermal mining in El Salvador, and solar mining in Texas takes off

For the Chinese government, such a decision has been brewing for a very long time and I even wonder why they were so indecisive for the last four years, when in 2017 they announced their intention to restrict the circulation of cryptocurrency.
China is now preparing to announce the official launch of its digitized yuan. This will be a significant event that they want to coincide with the opening of the Winter Olympic Games. Therefore, now it is a good opportunity for China to attack potential competitors of the digitized yuan - cryptocurrencies, as well as private and other commercial stablecoins.

[bbc.reporter]

I am presently very skeptical about the timing of this ban. I reckon that China’s communist party already knows that something is wrong with their economy and it might collapse within 2 years. China’s bond yields are rising. This implies that there are no buyers.



Rising China bond yields prompt fears over coming surge in defaults

Rising investor concerns over shaky finances in China’s most economically fragile provinces have prompted a sell-off in state-run groups’ bonds, as analysts warn of a surge in defaults in the country’s $17tn credit market.

Source https://www.ft.com/content/45ca1df1-5857-413f-8099-ec8b7af44fbe

[Woodie]

“Because these are older machines that were in a warehouse for many, many years and were just making 5%–10%, and they were on. But it doesn’t make commercial sense to now take those off and move them.”

Should someone go back to the drawing board and find a way to make more efficient and reliable machines than the "old machines ".
Could increasing power generation which is greener be another possible solution to this mining problem...

It might be worth considering that China is looking to lower it's carbon emissions and reduce pollution in it's country. One way to do this is eliminate excessive usage of electricity from coal from bitcoin mining. I would like to have seen China allowing green Bitcoin mining, perhaps it is something they will consider in the future - especially if geothermal mining in El Salvador, and solar mining in Texas takes off

These are the kind of reasons that should make headlines more so as to get miners thinking for better solutions on how to mine their bitcoin and if possible continue these activities back home.