Officials in Sichuan Instruct Bitcoin Miners to Shut Down Operations: Report

According to regional reports, bitcoin miners in Sichuan have been told by the Ya’an municipal government that they have until June 25 to shut down operations. Sichuan has been eyed closely in recent times as it’s estimated that a large demographic of miners are situated in the region.

Sichuan Ya’an Energy Bureau Tells Bitcoin Miners to Close Shop

Sichuan power plants have been told to stop servicing bitcoin miners in the area according to reports stemming from the Ya’an municipal government. The regional publication Panews was told by an “insider” that the Sichuan Ya’an Energy Bureau and the Science and Technology Bureau held a meeting about the decision and came to a resolution to “clean up and rectify bitcoin mining companies in Ya’an.”

The Panews report further says that all mines need to shut down on June 25 and it includes abandoning hydropower plants as well. Additionally, the Chinese journalist Colin “Wu” Blockchain reported on the incident on Twitter.

“On June 18, Sichuan officially issued a document requesting power generation companies are required to immediately stop supplying power to any virtual currency mining, and report the relevant situation on the 25th,” the reporter noted. He further added:

The document identified 26 large mining projects and required to be monitored and shut down. At present, the hashrate of Bitcoin and Ethereum has not fluctuated. There are many small and medium-sized hydropower stations in Yunnan, Sichuan, and it may be difficult for them to receive government supervision. However, large-scale projects will be shut down in the short term.

There have been various reports during the last few weeks noting that a number of provinces in China have been cracking down on bitcoin mining. Many of these reports have been sharing the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance index map which claims to show 65% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate resides in China. However, the CBECI hashrate map is not reliable whatsoever, as the map has not been updated since April 2020.

Bitcoin’s hashrate has been sliding in recent weeks and fluctuating wildly as well. Miners from China have seen lots of shuffling among pools in terms of bitcoin hashrate distribution. At the time of writing, the hashrate is around 120 exahash per second (EH/s) after being above 140 EH/s six hours ago.