Bitcoin Mining Maker Bitmain Officially Halts Shipping to China, Hash Rate Up Over 130% from June-low

Bitmain, one of the largest bitcoin mining machine manufacturers, has confirmed that it will stop shipping antminer to mainland China.

“From October 11, 2021, Antminer will stop shipping to mainland China (excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan),” said Bitmain in an official statement made on its WeChat account. This suspension comes after the People’s Bank of China’s ban on crypto activity.

This move only affects the users in China, and overseas customers will remain unaffected. The company further said that it has actually increased the supply of Antbox to accelerate the construction of overseas mining facilities.

Bitmain’s domestic market share, however, has already been declining ever since 2017, when it accounted for nearly 50% of its revenues.

At the same time, in response to the Chinese government’s carbon neutral policy, Bitmain has completed carbon indicator purchases, mainly from clean energy power generation projects in Yunnan, Xinjiang, and other places in China.

Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu founded Matrixport, also announced that it will stop providing services to users in mainland China on October 15, much like about two dozen other companies.

Meanwhile, China’s crackdown on the crypto industry presented an opportunity for miners in other countries, especially the US and Kazakhstan. This resulted in a recovery in bitcoin’s hash rate, currently at 156.57 Th/s. The average bitcoin hash rate has increased more than 130% since the late June low.

Recently, the second largest Ethereum mining pool, SparkPool, and another one, BeePool, also halted their services to all of its users after the ban.

Besides commercial crypto mining, China has also been cracking down on at-home mining operations with graphics processing units (GPUs). To discover secret mining activities, China’s provincial government has been conducting a probe into local energy consumption and mining pool IP traffic.

In other news, the Chinese judiciary is now investigating how they can convict and sentence cryptocurrency behavior and is also expected to issue relevant judicial interpretations in the future, reported Caijing Magazine citing sources close to the Chinese government.