Bitmain, one of the biggest producers of Bitcoin mining machines in the world, has confirmed it is no longer shipping Antminer to mainland China. Antminers is mining hardware created by the Chinese company. A statement from Bitmain’s official WeChat account reveals:
From October 11, 2021, Antminer will stop shipping to mainland China (excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan).
The company adds that this move will not affect its overseas customers. To accelerate construction of overseas mines, Bitmain has increased the supply of Antbox.
Strictest anti-crypto measures in history
In late September, CoinDesk reported that Bitmain intended to suspend sales of its equipment to miners in the mainland after China’s wide-ranging ban on crypto activity. On September 24, 2021, the People’s Bank of China publicized a series of strict measures against crypto trading.
These outlawed all crypto-related transactions for the first time, including those involving offshore crypto exchanges.
The Chinese government banned banks and other financial institutions from offering fiat to crypto exchanges or vice versa.
All entities found facilitating any transactions with crypto face legal prosecution, including people who work for offshore exchanges serving China, but live in the mainland.
A golden opportunity for miners outside China
After China’s crackdown on the crypto industry, there was a mining boom outside the region, which led the Bitcoin network’s hashrate to improve considerably. The hashrate is a key indicator of mining activity.
More specifically, the mean hashrate increased by more than 140% since plummeting in July, data by analytics firm Glassnode showed.
Mining difficulty increases in parallel to the hashrate, but this doesn’t worry investors. They are sure Bitcoin’s recent price gains will bring higher profit. For miners, recovery of the hashrate has contributed to positive investor sentiment.
Glassnode stated in a report published on October 4:
The Bitcoin mining industry experienced the most dramatic short-term disruption in all history, with over 50% of the network hashpower coming offline throughout May. After bottoming out in late July, protocol mining difficulty has risen by 39%, with a further additional upwards adjustment of around 3.9% expected this week.
Glassnode added that since then, the Bitcoin hashrate has been on a “consistent path to recovery”.
This tendency might be observed for Ethereum in the near future too. SparkPool, the second biggest Ethereum mining pool in the world, stopped working due to the Chinese ban in late September. BeePool followed suit.
