China’s eastern province of Jiangsu today announced that it is cracking down on covert cryptocurrency mining activities, in response to the notice jointly issued two weeks ago by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and several other public security and information technology authorities.
Fast facts
- The Jiangsu Communications Administration said it is strengthening its regulatory actions against crypto mining activities and banning miners that operate in the name of data centers.
- The local authority said in the statement it has identified about 136.77 Mbps of outflow volume related to mining pools in the province, and 4,502 internet IP addresses that were involved with mining, with total hashing power surpassing 10 petahashes per second. The power consumption averaged 260,000 kWh per day, according to the statement.
- Those mining Bitcoin and Ether were mostly located in cities such as Suzhou, Xuzhou and Nanjing — Jiangsu’s capital city, the authority said.
- The move comes as China intensified a nationwide crackdown on crypto trading and mining. On Sept. 24, China not only declared crypto trading illegal but said it will enhance electricity monitoring to identify mining projects. The NDRC said that banning crypto mining activities is essential for the country to meet its carbon neutrality goals.
- China has been cracking down on the sector, with the most recent bans being imposed in Hebei and Gansu provinces, followed by similar clampdowns in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Yunnan and Sichuan.