Inner Mongolia’s closure of crypto mine operations slows since September

Inner Mongolia has closed 49 cryptocurrency mining farms in total, but only four since September, according to the Inner Mongolia Daily, indicating either the process has been successful or the shutdown drive mandated by Beijing is slowing.

Fast facts

• As of last September, Inner Mongolia had shut down 45 farms, state-backed newspaper Science & Technology Daily reported at the time.

• Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region on the northern border of China, is rich in coal and has cheap electricity. Local crypto mining farms accounted for 8% of the global Bitcoin mining hashrate, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) said last May.

• China started clamping down crypto mining last March, and some mining farms have relocated overseas.

• But China’s mining hashrate started to rise again late last year and by January it had become the second-largest Bitcoin mining hub with 21% of the global hashrate, according to CCAF.

• Miners are still operating secretly in China, either scattered in rural areas or leveraging relationships with local governments to conceal their mining sites.

• Bitcoin’s price has been hovering around $30,000 for a month and just hit a 16-month low of $25,000 on Monday, according to CoinGecko.