By Shelly Melancon (Switzerland)
Renowned crypto mining pool, BTC.com, owned by 500.com (an NYSE-listed Chinese lottery service provider) but operated by BIT mining, has disclosed that it had successfully relocated the first set of its mining machines to Kazakhstan.
Before its acquisition by 500.com in February this year, BITmain and BITdeer were the companies running BIT.com. As of today, BIT.com ranks among the top five pools globally. It usually validates 11% of blocks on the bitcoin (BTC) blockchain.
BIT.com had to relocate after receiving a notice from authorities of the western Sichuan province through the state grid that there would be an imminent suspension of power supply to one of BTC.com’s local data centers.
Part of yesterday’s announcement from BTC mining read thus; “three days ago, our indirect subsidiary (Ganzi Changhe Hydropower Consumption Service Co. Ltd.) received notice from State Grid Sichuan Ganzi Electric Power Co. Ltd.[…] Which stated that power supply to Ganzi Changhe Data Center would be suspended from that same day by 9 pm Beijing time. “
“Hence, that data center ceased operations since that day. Ganzi Changhe data center and other data centers in the Sichaun province account for about 4% of the state grid power’s total revenues for last month,” the notice concluded.
Chinese Provinces Enforcing Crypto Miners Ban
The state grid’s actions result from the continued clampdown on crypto miners by the Chinese authorities. They believe that crypto miners are causing extreme air pollution to the environment, which directly opposes China’s de-carbonization objectives.
Also read:In areas known as crypto miners’ hubs (for example, inner Mongolia), provincial authorities have released a dedicated phone number for residents to report any mining (or suspected mining) operations as they are all deemed illegal.
Due to these aggressive actions by these provincial authorities, three top crypto mining companies (Hashcow, Huobi, and BTC.top) recently announced that they would no longer be providing crypto mining services.
Xianfeng Yang, the BIT mining CEO, indirectly suggested that the company might toe the same line as the mining companies previously mentioned, saying that “we remain committed to lowering our carbon footprint to avoid polluting the environment. One way to do that is to expand our operations overseas strategically. Since we already have investments in crypto mining data centers in Texas and Kazakhstan, we are already developing our overseas resources fast to have enough options for excellent mining operations.”
Energy Crisis: Why Other Nations Don’t Want Crypto Miners
Though China is against crypto mining operations because of their negative impact on the environment, other nations are more concerned about the enormous power consumption of mining operations than its negative impact on the environment.
Two months, a former government official in Kyrgyzstan opined that crypto mining operations are the major cause of energy problems in the country. Several people from Iran and the Caucasus have also raised similar worries.
This year, Elon Musk took sides with China, global regulators, and non-profits by announcing that Tesla (its electric car company) would no longer accept bitcoin as a means of payment for tesla cars. Bitcoin mining operations consume high amounts of energy and leave a significant carbon footprint which causes environmental degradation.
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