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Recently, affected by the new rules for managing virtual currencies, Bitcoin mining machine manufacturer Bitmain announced that its Antminer will stop shipping to mainland China from October 11. It will provide alternatives for mainland customers who have purchased forward products, and the shipping policy adjustment will not affect overseas customers. Bitmain also said that in response to the carbon neutrality policy, the company has completed several batches of carbon quota procurement, and the quotas mainly come from clean energy power generation projects in Yunnan, Xinjiang and other places in China.
In fact, since May this year, regulatory authorities have been stepping up their crackdown on virtual currency "mining" and other activities. Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Sichuan and other places have also successively introduced policies to clean up and rectify "mining" related industries, with remarkable results. Large-scale mine closures have had a significant impact on mining machine manufacturers
According to the "2021 First Half Digital Currency Anti-Money Laundering and DeFi Industry Security Report", the total amount of funds flowing out of domestic trading platforms to foreign trading platforms in the first half of 2021 reached US$28.3 billion, 1.6 times the total amount of funds flowing out in 2020. This is mainly due to the continued rise in Bitcoin prices in the first half of the year. From May to June, due to the strengthening of domestic policies on mining and trading supervision, the outflow volume showed a downward trend, down nearly 40%.
Under the background of strict supervision, many domestic mining machine manufacturers, mining farms, and mining pools have begun to shut down and strategically shift to "going overseas". The reporter noted that in July, Bitmain announced the divestiture of its mining pool brand Ant Pool and independently carried out mining pool and other businesses overseas; in June, mining machine manufacturer Canaan Technology announced the official launch of its self-operated "mining" business in Kazakhstan, and the first batch of Avalon mining machines were put on the shelves and started running; Ebang International also announced that it had stopped its domestic mining machine hosting business, and said that its focus is to accelerate the establishment of compliant mining farms in North America and Europe, and try its best to use renewable energy for power supply.
Zheng Dingxiang, president of the Shenzhen Information Service Industry Blockchain Association, told the Securities Daily reporter: "With the large-scale withdrawal of mining farms, mining machine manufacturers have suffered a major impact in the domestic market. To a certain extent, it has also warned mining machine manufacturers that speculative behavior based on a single business and focusing on short-term profiteering is not a long-term solution. On the other hand, it has also forced mining machine manufacturers to adjust their industrial structure." Virtual currency "mining" will be included in the elimination list
On September 24, in order to prevent the resurgence of virtual currency "mining" and other activities, the regulatory authorities took another strong approach. The National Development and Reform Commission and 11 other departments further issued the "Notice on the Rectification of Virtual Currency "Mining" Activities", proposing to strengthen the supervision of the entire upstream and downstream industry chain of virtual currency "mining" activities. On the same day, the People's Bank of China and ten other departments also issued new regulations to rectify "virtual currency speculation", clarifying that virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities.
Chen Xiaohua, an expert in the review of major industrial Internet blockchain projects of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and chairman of the Blockchain Professional Committee of the China Mobile Communications Association, told the Securities Daily reporter that the "mining" industry not only consumes a lot of energy and is not in line with the carbon neutrality policy, but also has limited driving effects on high-quality economic development, scientific and technological progress, etc., and may trigger related risks, which will have an adverse impact on my country's financial system.
"Regulation of the entire industry chain can avoid 'suppressing one problem but causing another', thereby eradicating the trend of speculation in virtual currency transactions." Ding Feipeng, director of Beijing Liantong Law Firm, told the Securities Daily reporter that the trend of speculation in virtual currency transactions has continued to resurface in recent years, and the main reason is the "money-making effect" it creates. The more active the trading, the more obvious the money-making effect, the more so-called "get-rich-quick" stories there are, and more people will participate in trading and mining. The active trading and mining, in turn, stimulate speculation, and the cycle continues.
The reporter noticed that after all departments requested an all-round crackdown on virtual currency on September 24, Jiangsu Province took the lead in a comprehensive investigation of virtual currency "mining" activities. The Jiangsu Provincial Communications Administration Bureau monitored and found that the export traffic of the mining pools carrying out virtual currency activities in Jiangsu Province reached 136.77Mbps, the total number of Internet IP addresses involved in "mining" was 4,502, the computing power resources consumed exceeded 10PH/s, and the energy consumption was 260,000 degrees/day. Judging from the ownership and nature of the IP addresses, the proportion of those belonging to party and government agencies, universities, and enterprises that were invaded and used to carry out virtual currency "mining" activities accounted for about 21%. In the next step, the Provincial Communications Administration Bureau will continue to carry out virtual currency "mining" situation analysis, and further cooperate with relevant departments to form a "multi-dimensional, multi-level" disposal system.
In addition, it is worth noting that on October 8, the National Development and Reform Commission publicly solicited opinions on the "Negative List for Market Access (2021 Edition)" and re-included virtual currency "mining" in the elimination list. Chen Xiaohua said that if virtual currency "mining" projects are regarded as eliminated industries and are truly included in the above negative list, the "mining" industry will basically not exist if local governments want to approve projects, and virtual currency "mining" will face greater cleanup efforts.
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