After a few months of China crackdown on mining. Check it out!

[tranthidung]

• Source:  Cambrigde Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index
• With the great hashrate migration, since May, the distribution of Bitcoin hashrate on the globe has changed a lot.
• There are some countries which have increases of hashrate such as the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan. China has a share fall to 0.
• More decentralization, at least geographically, more ownership of hashrates.
• Good or bad. Please share your thoughts about this trend.

* Note: In graphs, I made a typo: Perent, it should be Percent.

To help you more easily to see chronologically changes, I break it down by country, over months.

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[Charles-Tim]

Nothing like China can take over bitcoin or bitcoin network again, it appeared to novices before that China can be in control of bitcoin, but bitcoin hashrate increased back as many miners left China into another country to mine bitcoin while some mining pools especially in United State increased their mining hashrate.

What this just revealed is that if a country do not support bitcoin, some other countries are supporting it, if mining bitcoin is not allowed in a country or banned, other countries will see it as an opportunity to encourage mining and take advantage of the opportunity.

I will wish many other countries to encourage mining so that USA will not be the new China so that the hashes generation is not congested in a single country.

[NeuroticFish]

While the numbers do look impressive, have hard times believing that mainland China has indeed 0 hash rate. I also don't think that the data is that accurate.
And I've looked at the link you posted and everything depends greatly on what the miners are reporting (and whether they use any proxy or such) and what mining pools are part of the reporting/sample.

So while the numbers may not be that accurate, the trend is clear: everybody who could has moved out of China. We are also back to December/January hash rate. Not the May maximum, but will get there too. Machines still need to be relocated and some may have been also stopped for good.

Goodbye China  

[avikz]

I believe that's what was expected after the ban by the Chinese government. But frankly I didn't expect China to slip to 0 but definitely expected a drop. It's amazing and positive for the bitcoin network. Too much dependency on a authoritarian nation and ruin the entire bitcoin network. I am happy that the chance is now gone.

But China can quickly make up for it if the government allows bitcoin mining in future. So I just hope that the Chinese government stays firm with their decision and let the bitcoin network flourish.

[stompix]

So while the numbers may not be that accurate, the trend is clear: everybody who could has moved out of China. We are also back to December/January hash rate. Not the May maximum, but will get there too. Machines still need to be relocated and some may have been also stopped for good.

But with a price per BTC and a revenue per TH nearly 50% higher and with the hashrate staying flat for this period, with the slight possibility of going down, the pace is now 99.55 of what it should be.

With this energy crisis, I doubt we will see the hash rate back to May levels this year despite the price being close to the same levels.
China had a ton of cheap and very cheap power, you will never be able to compete with that unless you use the same resources and coal is treated like rabies in the rest of the world.

I will wish many other countries to encourage mining so that USA will not be the new China so that the hashes generation is not congested in a single country.

No chance of that happening, companies in the US have a lot of orders for the next year and as long the authorities let them still run coal and flare gas there is nothing stopping them from going over the share China held in the past.

[hugeblack]

It is impossible to believe that mining in China has fallen to zero, even when the government is tough on something, the compliance rate will not be zero.
miners will go to places with cheap electricity and abundant profit, regardless of whether it is in China or any other country that provides them with these advantages, but the advantage in China lies in the low energy fees and obtaining equipment and equipment quickly.


In general, if this data is accurate, even if at a low percentage, Bitcoin mining decentralization looks good.

[SFR10]

• Good or bad. Please share your thoughts about this trend.

I will wish many other countries to encourage mining so that USA will not be the new China so that the hashes generation is not congested in a single country.

Same here! I don't mind seeing the US having more hash rate than other countries on that list, but having said that, I really don't like seeing around 1/3rd ^{[or probably more by now]} of the hash rate being in a single country ^{[doesn't matter which one]}!
^{- If someday, the US decides to follow in China's footsteps, the impact that it could have it'd be a lot more than what China had when it started the bans for the first time!}

But China can quickly make up for it if the government allows bitcoin mining in future.

Even if that happens, I don't think most of the miners would go back ^{[it's not worth the risk]}.

[hannahB4]

When I read the news concerning the China ban I was a little bit concerned about what will become of bitcoin but I was surprised about the positive turn bitcoin took even after the news and all which shows that Bitcoin is here to thrive be there any ban from any Country.

[dkbit98]

One interesting thing that we all know is that most of the top mining pools are still coming from China, even if they are not physically showing location in mainland China.
Everyone knows that F2Pool, Antpool, ViaBTC and few other pools have majority of hashrate, and they are probably using some VPN or proxy to redirected IP addresses.
We don't have any big new or unknown mining pools so I don't think anything really changed despite numbers this Cambrigde website is showing.

[tranthidung]

One interesting thing that we all know is that most of the top mining pools are still coming from China, even if they are not physically showing location in mainland China.
Everyone knows that F2Pool, Antpool, ViaBTC and few other pools have majority of hashrate, and they are probably using some VPN or proxy to redirected IP addresses.
We don't have any big new or unknown mining pools so I don't think anything really changed despite numbers this Cambrigde website is showing.

It is impossible to believe that mining in China has fallen to zero, even when the government is tough on something, the compliance rate will not be zero.

So while the numbers may not be that accurate, the trend is clear: everybody who could has moved out of China.

I agree that we can not verify those data, not only for China but also for other countries. It is unbelievable that all mining farms located in China mainland turn off their ASICs.

From the peak (13 May 2021 - 197.6 Ehash/s) to the bottom (28 June 2021 - 68 Ehash/s), it is a 65.6% drop of hashrate. After that hashrate recovers a lot and we can not know where the newly added hashrate come from, with contribution of China or without China.

The only thing we know is Bitcoin mining industry is growing and expanded to other countries, more geographical locations, more decentralized.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-hashrate.html#3y

We can not verify things are happening in China now but with the FUD history of China mainland, I believe when their government solve issues of energy supply, they will allow Bitcoin mining again.

Even if that happens, I don't think most of the miners would go back ^{[it's not worth the risk]}.

It is same for exchanges, they gradually to migrate out of China mainland, years ago. The latest attempt to make more regulations and barriers for crypto transactions in China mainland only give crypto exchanges more reasons to move their main officies out of China.

So miners can turn on their ASICs if the ban on Bitcoin mining is removed but I agree that more miners and mining companies will try to decentralize their own risks by moving to other countries.

[tranthidung]

Updates with raw EHS by countries

• The USA.: Increase from 15.7 EHS (Jan) to 42.7 EHS (Aug)
• Kazakhstan.: Increase from 9.2 EHS (Jan) to 21.9 EHS (Aug)
• Russia Federation: Increase from 10.3 EHS (Jan) to 13.6 EHS (Aug)
• Canada: Increase from 1.3 EHS (Jan) to 11.5 EHS (Aug) - If the data is accurate and if Canada maintains such growth rate, it will join top 3 soon.

[Poker Player]

While the numbers do look impressive, have hard times believing that mainland China has indeed 0 hash rate.

It is impossible to believe that mining in China has fallen to zero

I do believe it. I understand that it has fallen to almost 0%, and that by approximation on the graph it is zero. I can believe that some individual person is still mining, but the big farms? Not a chance. It would be easy for the Chinese government to detect large light consumption, plus surely they had already detected where the farms were before. Why go to another part of China to continue mining if they can go to a country where it is legal?

Apart from the fact that normally nobody wants to have problems with the government for exercising a forbidden activity, but even less with the authoritarian Chinese government.

[tranthidung]

I can believe that some individual person is still mining, but the big farms? Not a chance. It would be easy for the Chinese government to detect large light consumption, plus surely they had already detected where the farms were before. Why go to another part of China to continue mining if they can go to a country where it is legal?

Apart from the fact that normally nobody wants to have problems with the government for exercising a forbidden activity, but even less with the authoritarian Chinese government.

As said, China has been in a crisis of energy shortage hence they have to implement serious regulations on Bitcoin mining to make sure energy supply is enough for other industries that involve more in the national wealth.

When it is fixed, they will see no reason to keep the ban on Bitcoin mining that is not harmful for the nation.

• China's Energy Crisis Is Hitting Everything From iPhones to Milk

[pooya87]

China has a share fall to 0.
More decentralization,

You can not call the sum of all this "more decentralization" since one country (regardless of personal feelings about that country) has no miners anymore. If anything this event decreased decentralization since countries that already had a share of the total hashrate now have more share while China has 0.

P.S. I doubt the accuracy of the first chart that shows China had about 75% of the hashrate in Sep 19.

[o48o]

I would have thought that some of them end up mining in secrecy, with solar power or something... But as their hashrate is zero now, has the markets been flooded with cheap chinese mining equipment lately? I haven't been following that scene.

[tranthidung]

You can not call the sum of all this "more decentralization" since one country (regardless of personal feelings about that country) has no miners anymore. If anything this event decreased decentralization since countries that already had a share of the total hashrate now have more share while China has 0.

I meant there are more hashrate in other countries especially the USA and Canada. Hashrate grows up too fast in those countries. I meant it is geographical decentralization that does not equal to the decentralization of hashrate in ownership.

The percent of hashrate from the USA does not increase too much, because there are other countries have increase in hashrate. If the trend in other countries keep going and bigger than from the USA, the percent from USA. will fall down. The USA will likely not a second dominating nation like China.

From Apr to Aug, assumtion - those stats are accurate.

• USA: 26.5 to 42.7 EHS or 16.9% to 35.4%
• Canada: 4.7 to 11.5 EHS or 3% to 9.6%

P.S. I doubt the accuracy of the first chart that shows China had about 75% of the hashrate in Sep 19.

I am not sure, but possibly if we know in the past few years, there are some pools in China that sum up to more than 51% of network hashrate, so a few smaller pools can contribute to bring it up to 75%. Obviously I know pools and ownership are different if we talk about origin of hashrate.

[DaveF]

For the big industrial farms yes, they probably all left China or are in the process of leaving.
But they are owned by the same people, the hardware is now someplace else the control of the hardware is the same.

For the small 1 or 2 miner people (home / hobby) they are still there. Although the internet in china is heavily regulated by the great firewall of china as it's called, there are enough holes in it to get enough data through to mine. Either through VPNs or other proxies that hide the traffic. Will hurt profitability due to stale shares but it's still there.

Slightly OT, but GPU - altcoin mining, has probably not changed much. There has been almost 0 uptick on used graphic card availability so it's not like people are turning off their rigs and selling the cards.

-Dave

[Argoo]

For the big industrial farms yes, they probably all left China or are in the process of leaving.
But they are owned by the same people, the hardware is now someplace else the control of the hardware is the same.

For the small 1 or 2 miner people (home / hobby) they are still there. Although the internet in china is heavily regulated by the great firewall of china as it's called there are enough holes in it to get enough data through to mine. Either through VPNs or other proxies that hide the traffic. Will hurt profitability due to stale shares but it's still there.

Slightly OT, but GPU - altcoin mining, has probably not changed much. There has been almost 0 uptick on used graphic card availability so it's not like people are turning off their rigs.

-Dave

Of course, it is unrealistic that in such a large country like China with such a dense population in such a short time, even after the ban, Bitcoin mining fell to zero. Small miners, of course, still work there, but in the shadows. Considering the fact that negative news on cryptocurrency constantly came from the government of China, one of the channels of such news has already been blocked. Therefore, in general, this is not bad for cryptocurrency.
In addition, the cryptocurrency market quite calmly took the information of the People's Bank of China about the illegality of all transactions in cryptocurrency. We see that bitcoin has now risen to almost 58,000 dollars, and altcoins are also growing in price. If the Chinese government still has a negative attitude towards cryptocurrency, it would be better if there are fewer levers of negative influence on it.

[Quickseller]

While the numbers do look impressive, have hard times believing that mainland China has indeed 0 hash rate.

It is unlikely that China has no miners inside its mainland. In order to hide mining activity from the CCP, any remaining miners will have to hide their Chinese IP addresses.

With the above being said, any major mining operations are going to shut down their operations and either attempt to sell their equipment overseas, or move their equipment overseas once they have the appropriate infrastructure in place. Mom and Pop mining operations have less risk of being targeted by the government, and they may still be mining via a VPN, and properly wont be otherwise investigated.

To those that are asking why the CCP would implement this kind of ban, the first reason is social control, the use of bitcoin gives people freedom, and the CCP does not want its people to have freedom, the second reason is capital control, if Chinese citizens cannot withdraw their money from mainland China, they will ultimately need to "invest" it in CCP approved banks.

[davis196]

China hashrate dropping from 41% to 0% in one month(June-July 2021) seems suspicious to me.
I wonder what will happen to the Chinese companies that produce mining hardware,like Bitmain?
Will they keep producing mining hardware and export it outside China?
The concerns about the mining hashrate being concentrated in one country were false.Bitcoin was OK,when the vast majority of the mining was located in China.China never had any control over Bitcoin.
Now,Bitcoin is still doing fine,with the hashrate being re-distributed among several countries.