China's Mining Farm Shutdown: The Carbon Emission Factor

So, why did China decide to close down its mining farms? The big reason is carbon emissions. I found this article that kinda saw this coming. It talks about Bitcoin Segwit2M (B2X) and how it aims to be a greener and more efficient version of Bitcoin. Basically, China is shutting down those energy-intensive and heavily polluting factories as part of a global effort to tackle carbon emissions. By the end of this year, we might witness a 30-50% drop in hashrate due to all the Chinese mining farms going offline this winter. There’s just not enough hydro power, and the government is strictly controlling carbon emissions, shutting down coal power plants too. This could be a good opportunity for overseas miners to jump in. If your electricity costs are below 4 cents per kWh and you have enough capacity, now might be the time.

Sorry, since they still support anti-consensus things, I don't trust them for being fair also in their news. Do you have other source for this "information"? I mean that 50% drop sounds catastrophic, but on the other hand the number seems to be plainly out of the belly. So without better proof, it can go straight into the FUD bin.

This probably belongs more in mining speculation but we saw a 20%+ difficulty jump on the 13th, but that came after the 12% drop on the 1st, now if everything stays stable we are looking at about an 8% drop in a couple of days. That looks more to me like the difficulty is moving with the price (with the 2 week delay of difficulty adjustment) AT $60k+ BTC I was thinking about putting some S9 units back online. At $40K- BTC I am thinking about pulling the S19 offline and selling it here. How many other people wind up in the same loop? Saying China is shutting down farms for carbon emissions is FUD at best. -Dave

so, go to google the policy of Mr. Xi announcement on May 1st. here is link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-01/xi-vows-focus-on-emission-cuts-end-energy-inefficient-projects.  and china Copper smelting companies reduce imports of copper concentrate ， in order to reduce power consumption .https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20210509-1145472

take a look the reply of next post.

Wow, they actually use coal for power?  I'm no expert on how our electrical grid is powered, but I thought most countries had done away with coal--please correct me if I'm way off base, which is quite possible.  I don't know what to make of this news either, since I don't really trust information coming out of China.  What I do know is that bitcoin miners aren't likely to give up mining, and if China makes it illegal they'll move their operations to another country where it's still legal to mine.  I know I've written that before, and I believe it was with respect to China as well, so I'm thinking this is probably a bunch of BS. You have cheap enough electricity where you live?  I thought your state (which I won't disclose) had pretty high utility rates.  Do you still mine bitcoin now and then?

The data center we use forces you to have 2 KVA per rack. I can have 1 RPi in the rack and it still comes with and we pay for 2KVA. What is nice is that it is in aggregate so 4 racks 8KVa but I can have 2 with 3 and 2 with 1 and it's all good. So, when we needed more space but not more power we got an extra 4KVa that I have been using to run some old servers for legitimate work. BUT, it's just to make my life easier. When BTC was at $60k I was thinking of shutting them down and bringing in some S9s With the above being said, I think it's important to note that there is probably a lot of small miners around that are in the same boat. They have power that they are "forced" to pay for so they mine with it. Seriously, if we could have had those racks for less money but only 1 KVA you bet we would have taken it. I have a client who has office space that has fixed electric costs based on space. He runs some GPU rigs since no matter how much he argued with the management company of the building, the power cost would not budge....so now instead of using 30% to 40% of the power they bill him for he is using 85% to 90% If he could figure how to be at 99% without the risk of going over and getting an extra bill you bet your ass he would be there adding GPUs. -Dave

Yeah we got the sweetheart five year deal it ends in 2023. our main warehouse guy had a contract for power he prepaid for five years. he lost his main customer an icecream company and had prepaid power. we came along and have been there since december 2018. lots of niche guys like us with 200kwatt here 100 kwatt there. we have access to 500 kwatts. dont have the gear ⚙️. so will expand slowly. hope china really does kick out miners it will be good for me. btw eth hash grows like mad as it simply pays more $$$ per watt of power.

more detailed policy coming. here is Inner Mongolia banning mining policy: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rI-Uiu1BKWEAGLJJ0x4cPg

All these carbon emissions in relation to bitcoin mining have nothing to do with reality and can only be applied to countries where there is a shortage of electricity, otherwise just speculation, because according to research, the annual electricity costs of bitcoin miners are 113.89 TWh, while in the production of gold, the figure reaches 240.61 TWh, and in the banking sector-about 263.72 TWh https://www.scribd.com/document/508170253/Galaxy-Digital-Mining-On-Bitcoin-Energy-Consumption#from_embed

A couple good links regarding power usage: Mining power usage Power usage comparisons On that comparisons page they looks at the power used in the US alone to power always-on but idle devices: result is that power used for idle devices would power the entire BTC network for 1.9 years. Regarding China also taking several large aluminum refining plants offline, that is a double 'win' if their goal is to reduce carbon emissions. The reason is because not only does it require vast amounts of energy but also because the process of reducing Al2O3 into Al combines the liberated O2 with carbon from the electrodes used and that produces CO2. How much? 11.5 tons of CO2 per ton of Aluminum. That number is including the CO2 from using coal to produce power. When Hydro is used that same article states that emission drops to two to four tons of CO2 per-ton of Aluminum.

got the point. try to build up local mining farm, most miner will be moved out of china. let's help to decentralize the hashrate.

all these chart has no sense. the fact is bitcoin mining used a lot energy. and in winter, use a lot coal-burn energy.

Canaan Creative has spoken out against the indiscriminate prosecution of mining in China, according to Reuters. The company said that this business helps to use electricity more efficiently and contributes to employment and regional economies. During a conference call dedicated to financial indicators, Canaan CEO Nangeng Zhang noted that the mining of cryptocurrencies using fossil fuels hinders the efforts of the authorities in the field of ecology, but those who use clean energy should not be subjected to repression. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mining-rig-maker-canaan-argues-against-wholesale-crackdown-bitcoin-mining-china-2021-06-02/?rpc=401&

I think this is a new deception. The production of green energy equipment requires electricity. Disposing of this equipment is also harmful to the environment. If green energy 10 years ago was not needed 99% of the time, now we will have other problems. Then you need to give up cars with a gasoline engine.

So what? Do you have a better solution for producing energy? Every single thing people and animals do has environmental repercussions so your point is what?... Sterilize the planet to 'save it' from Life?

I believe that you need to strive for maximum efficiency for companies that generate electricity. If we build plants for the production of green electricity and reduce the efficiency of combined heat and power plants, then we harm the environment, because the amount of emissions is not greatly reduced. Green energy is good, but you don't need to extract it where there is a surplus of generated electricity

The biggest electricity supplier in australia is owned by a hong kong company, paid no tax at all for many years by writing of costs in the hong kong company, pays very little tax now, and basically couldn't give a crap about how it produces that energy, for the obvious reason. i.e. if you want changes in the power sources, chase after the companies that use coal. Telling people to use less energy isn't gonna work since there's plenty of large companies that use plenty more power than bitcoin mining.

Wow!! That 8-point policy basically bans anybody from power plants, data centers, internet cafes and even individuals from mining. They are quoting not just usage as the reason but also money-laundering and raising money (ICOs). So, effectively they are banning any sort of mining within that Inner Mongolia region. If the other provinces in China follow, this will surely result in an exodus of miner and hopefully, cheap mining gear on sale for the rest of the world. So an industry that has shifted to this province and deployed equipment and personnel over all these years is being booted out. It is hard to fathom the reason behind this as is the case with most Chinese activities. This much is clear from this draft that they are pretty serious about kicking them out. Most developing countries still use coal. India for example has some of the highest reserves of coal but of lower quality. So, although the govt comes up with huge targets of moving towards renewables, they are not practical as renewables are not developed enough to cater to the requirements. This is why we are trying to develop stuff like Coal gasification, Methanol from Coal and increasing efficiency of thermal plants. Coal will continue to be the main source of power for these populous countries for a long time.

Today，Xinjiang shut down mining farm. https://twitter.com/realSatoshi_II/status/1402586570931146756?s=20