China is trying to bounce back as a hub for Bitcoin (BTC) miners, competing with the US. Data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) reveals that secret miners in China control 21 percent of Bitcoin's hash rate globally.
CBECI is a public research movement promoted by the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF). The agency is known as a Bitcoin mining map maker, based on the amount of electricity consumption.
The Chinese government imposed a ban on Bitcoin mining in June 2021. The decision was an attempt by the government to shut down mining activity after years of fighting with the crypto industry.
In fact, Bitcoin miners from China controlled 67 percent of the total Bitcoin network activity in September 2020.
As a result of the crackdown on Bitcoin miners in China, Bitcoin's hash rate dropped to 57 EH/s, even at a monthly average of zero percent. But as miners changed locations, the hash rate recovered and reached an all-time high of 248.11 EH/s as of February 2022.
The CBECI report reveals that there are many Bitcoin miners in China who are finding ways to get around the government ban. Instead of all moving to other countries, the secret miners allegedly used foreign proxy services to disguise mining activities, based on IP addresses.
Decrypt reports that the latest CBECI data shows China has a hash rate of 21 percent, the second largest after the US, which controls 38 percent. In China itself, Sichuan province is the center of the country's hash rate which reaches 42.59 percent.
“As the ban passed, it appears that secret miners are becoming more and more confident and comfortable with protection from local proxy services,” the CBECI report said.
Even before the Chinese ban took place, US Bitcoin miners had outpaced the growth of the network as a whole. According to CBECI, the US will double its hash rate control from 11 percent to 22 percent in the first half of 2021.
Bitcoin mining capacity in the US hit 70.97 EH/s last January, a 66 percent increase since August 2021. The increase led to CBECI adding a US Bitcoin mining map to its index.
The map shows the states of Georgia (31 percent), Texas (11 percent) and Kentucky (11 percent) controlling more than half of the country's hash rate.
CDAP began developing a model for estimating greenhouse gas emissions by the Bitcoin network.
The agency found that the ban on mining in China last year had made the environmental impact even more severe. [ed]
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