Original title: Comprehensive investigation! This big province took the lead, and even the National Development and Reform Commission said: “eliminate”
China Fund News Amman
I don’t know if I don’t check it, I’m surprised if I check it!
On October 8th, the Jiangsu Provincial Communications Administration website announced that it has recently comprehensively investigated the virtual currency “mining” behavior in the province, and monitored that the export traffic of the mining pools carrying out virtual currency activities reached 136.77 Mbps. Those who participated in the “mining” The total number of Internet IP addresses is 4502, which consumes more than 10PH/s of computing power and consumes 260,000 kWh/day.
It is worth noting that the Jiangsu Provincial Communications Administration stated that, taking Ethereum and Bitcoin, which have more virtual currency “mining” activities in Jiangsu Province, as examples, the cities with more “mining” are Suzhou, Xuzhou, and Nanjing. From the perspective of the ownership and nature of IP addresses, about 21% of the people belonging to party and government agencies, universities, and enterprises were invaded and used to conduct virtual currency “mining”.
The Jiangsu Provincial Communications Administration stated that it will continue to carry out virtual currency “mining” situation analysis in the next step, and further cooperate with relevant departments to form a “multi-dimensional, multi-level” disposal system, and dispose of relevant websites and mobile applications in accordance with the law, and cooperate Do a good job in tracing and cracking down on illegal virtual currency transactions.
What is the concept of 260,000 kWh per day?
What is the concept of consuming 260,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity every day?
Mr. Fund simply calculated an account, 10,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity is about the daily consumption of 3,000 households. That 260,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity can be used by 70,000 households or more in one day.
As a large industrial province, Jiangsu Province, although the “cutting power cuts” of the recent events were carried out under the background of dual energy consumption control, the fundamental reason behind it is still “power shortage.” Residents in many places in Jiangsu reported that even the street lights were not turned on in the park at night.
This shows how important it is to combat illegal financial activities such as “mining”!
“Mining” caused a large-scale blackout in this country
According to foreign media reports, in order to circumvent US sanctions, the Iranian government allows the use of cryptocurrency as a means of payment for imported goods. This approach is equivalent to “bringing wolves into the room.”
According to data from the blockchain analysis company Elliptic, from January to April this year, 4.5% of the world‘s bitcoin mining took place in Iran, which makes Iran one of the top 10 bitcoin mining countries in the world.
It is reported that Iran now has 14 large mines, which consume about 300 megawatts of electricity, which is equivalent to the energy consumption of a city with 100,000 inhabitants. It is understood that the electricity price in Iran is about 0.018-0.022 US dollars per kilowatt-hour, which is about 0.1-0.2 yuan in Renminbi, which is less than a quarter of the domestic price. Cheap electricity has aroused the enthusiasm of local and local miners, which naturally also includes Chinese miners.
But what followed was a nationwide power shortage in Iran.
In May of this year, some cities in Iran suffered frequent power outages. According to reports, in recent months, Tehran, the capital of Iran, and several other large cities have faced multiple power outages every day. As the weather and temperature continue to rise, Iran’s electricity consumption has also increased, so that the refrigerated storage facilities of the new crown vaccine in some medical institutions are difficult to continue to operate.
According to Iran’s National Television, emergency generators and power equipment installed in some hospitals that house COVID-19 patients are outdated. Due to frequent power failures, many COVID-19 patients cannot take oxygen.
The mining of cryptocurrency Bitcoin is considered to be one of the important reasons.
Government officials stated that most of the energy consumption in Bitcoin mining comes from illegal miners, people who have not obtained official mining licenses.
Therefore, Iranian President Rouhani announced a ban on the mining of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on May 26 for a period of 4 months. He said in a national televised speech that the ban will take effect immediately and will last until September 22.
With the recent lifting of Iran’s ban on Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin has climbed from a trough of around USD 40,000 on September 22 to around USD 55,000 in recent days.
Among them, the Chinese government has taken several actions to clean up mining activities and prohibit bitcoin from domestic transactions, which caused the price of bitcoin to fluctuate drastically. But under the stimulus of Iran’s resumption of mining and the United States not intending to ban virtual currencies, Bitcoin resumed its upward trend.
How much power does mining consume?
Earlier, Brian Lucey, a professor at Trinity University Dublin, said that the electricity consumed by Bitcoin alone is equivalent to a medium-sized European country.
More specifically, data from the University of Cambridge’s Bitcoin Power Consumption Index shows that Bitcoin mining is expected to consume 133.68 terawatt-hours of electricity each year (1 terawatt-hour is 1 billion kWh). This power consumption has exceeded the annual power consumption of a country in Sweden, ranking 27th in the world‘s power consumption.
However, the British “Financial Times” further pointed out that because the University of Cambridge’s forecast is calculated on the basis of Bitcoin miners using the least efficient computer to mine, therefore, the actual power consumption of mining is likely to be more than the above-mentioned forecast. high.
If calculated according to the upper limit, the annual power consumption of Bitcoin mining may reach 500 TWh, which is much higher than the average annual power consumption of the United Kingdom and nearly 450 TWh.
The Cambridge Bitcoin Power Consumption Index also shows that as of the end of 2020, about 65% of the world‘s Bitcoin mining activities took place in China.
However, in recent months, as China’s crackdown on virtual currency “mining” has increased, China’s dominant position in the Bitcoin mining market has actually been greatly weakened.
The Block Research data shows that in the past few months, most Bitcoin mining pools with a Chinese background have dropped by more than 50%. For example, the hashrate of Ant Mining Pool and Yuchi F2Pool have dropped by 58% and respectively since May. 56%.
National Development and Reform Commission: plans to include “mining” as “eliminated production capacity”
On the same day of the action in Jiangsu Province, on October 8, the National Development and Reform Commission publicly solicited opinions from the public on the “Market Access Negative List (2021 Edition)”. The “List (2021 version)” lists 6 prohibited access items and 111 permitted access items, for a total of 117 items, which is 6 less than the “Market Access Negative List (2020 Edition)”.
Among them, the virtual currency “mining” activities are included in the elimination category “I. Outdated production technology and equipment”.
In fact, mining not only consumes a lot of electricity, but also exacerbates carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers published a paper on Nature Climate Change (“Nature Climate Change”) that last year, mining produced 69 million tons of carbon dioxide, accounting for 1% of global emissions, and will raise the global temperature by 2°C within 20 years.
Previously, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 11 departments issued the “Notice on Renovating Virtual Currency “Mining” Activities” on September 24, requesting to strengthen the supervision of the entire upstream and downstream industry chain of virtual currency “mining” activities, and prohibiting new virtual currency “mining” activities. To accelerate the orderly exit of existing projects.
The central bank has clearly pointed out that virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities. Carrying out legal currency and virtual currency exchange business, exchange business between virtual currencies, buying and selling virtual currencies as a central counterparty, providing information intermediary and pricing services for virtual currency transactions, token issuance financing, virtual currency derivatives transactions and other virtual currency related Business activities suspected of illegal sale of tokens and tickets, unauthorized public issuance of securities, illegal operation of futures business, illegal fund-raising and other illegal financial activities are strictly prohibited and resolutely banned in accordance with the law.
If carrying out relevant illegal financial activities constitutes a crime, criminal responsibility shall be investigated in accordance with the law. Moreover, the provision of services by overseas virtual currency exchanges to Chinese residents through the Internet is also an illegal financial activity.
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