After the Chinese cryptocurrency crackdown, the United States became the largest Bitcoin miner | Crypto News

Before the Chinese authorities effectively banned this practice, China was the largest Bitcoin miner. Now, the United States has won the crown of China’s Bitcoin mining industry.

After China’s crackdown has effectively eliminated the former cradle of the Bitcoin industry, the United States has become the global Bitcoin mining center.

According to a study released by the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance on Wednesday, as of the end of August, the United States accounted for 35.4% of the global hash rate, which is a measure of the computing power used to withdraw digital currencies. This is more than twice the activity in April.

China’s measures to reduce the size of the industry to control financial risks have driven the country’s relative share to soar. In the early days of Bitcoin’s birth in 2009, this Asian country was the largest base for miners to obtain cheap electricity from coal and hydroelectric power plants.

Now, Beijing’s announcement in May to increase its efforts to contain the cryptocurrency market is paying off. Cambridge researchers found that the share of Bitcoin mining observed in China has actually dropped to zero. This is down from 75% when Cambridge started collecting data in September 2019. This is also a significant drop from the 46% level in April this year.

Covert mining is most likely still going on in China, but routing through a virtual private network makes the computer appear to be operating in another country. According to research by the University of Cambridge, the recent increase in hash rates in Ireland and Germany may be the result of miners using VPNs or proxy servers.

Miners are looking for cheap electricity and welcome the government to promote the prosperity of virtual currencies that are once again close to historical highs. The token has risen by more than 370% in the past year, with a transaction price of approximately US$54,650 and a total market value of approximately US$1 trillion.

In Kazakhstan, the share of hash rate in August rose from 8.2% in April to 18.1%, while the share of Russia rose to 11% from 6.8% in the same period.

The institute is part of the Cambridge Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, and its researchers collect data on the IP addresses of mining operators from the mining pools BTC.com, Poolin, ViaBTC and Foundry.

– With the assistance of Justina Lee.