About a few months back, China was flying high when it came to cryptocurrency mining. The country is reportedly responsible for mining 34% of the entire world’s Bitcoin (BTC). The country has several districts and sectors responsible for consuming an enormous amount of energy in order to mine cryptocurrencies.
However, in the past month, the Chinese public had to face several blackouts after an energy-generating plant had gone out of order. This also resulted in several cryptocurrency mining farms being without any electricity to carry out cryptocurrency mining activities.
For the first time in several years, China saw its Bitcoin (BTC) mining (hashrate) take a huge slump. One of the major reasons is the country’s determination of moving from carbon-generating energy sources to environment friendly.
The country has announced it aims to go carbon-free by 2040 and it has already started taking necessary steps to make that happen. The country is slowly moving away from importing coal for energy generation and move to other sources for generating clean energy.
In the light of the above, the government of China has already taken the first step. It involves the government of China paying a close look at the cryptocurrency mining farms and data centers. This step is important as the government needs to establish how these centers are consuming so much energy.
In an attempt to make the above possible, the authorities from Beijing have already started making their move. As per the reports, the authorities are carrying out inspections of the data centers used for mining cryptocurrencies.
The Information Technology and Economic Bureau from Beijing have reportedly sent out letters to the cryptocurrency farming data centers. According to reports, the bureau had sent the notification over to the cryptocurrency data mining centers on Tuesday.
The letters have asked the responsible teams at the data centers to confirm whether they are involved in mining Bitcoin (BTC), altcoins, or both at the same time.
The sources have confirmed that the notice has been sent on an emergency basis and they are required to respond to them immediately. The letters have demanded that the cryptocurrency data mining sectors reveal the amount of energy they are consuming for the mining activities.
In the list of the miners, the top three entities are the telecom providers who are currently the most prominent in China. It is currently unknown why Chinese authorities have become so active in finding out the energy consumption from the data mining centers.
It is even unknown if it is just authorities from Beijing currently trying to gather such information or if it is a campaign taking place in the entire country.
It is being speculated that the Chinese government is doing this to ensure they know how much energy they need to generate in order to meet energy requirements in an eco-friendly manner.