Some of the largest cryptocurrency mining operations are understandably located in China but this isn’t something that the country feels is worth doing. Regulators in China appear to be even considering a ban on cryptocurrency mining altogether as they have classified it as an “undesirable” economic activity.
That’s how cryptocurrency mining has been defined in a government document released earlier this week by China’s National Development and Reform Commission. The paper published by this regulatory body has a proposal to ban the mining of digital currencies such as bitcoin. This is due to concerns that such mining operations are a waste of valuable resources.
Digital currencies are mined using powerful, special computers that require a lot of power to function as they compute complex equations to mine the currency. The amount of energy being used by bitcoin operations collectively accounts for more than the energy that some small countries are using for their normal operations. This is obviously causing damage to the planet as well.
China has taken a very cautious approach to digital currencies on a government level, at least. The People’s Bank of China even banned initial coin offerings or ICOs in September 2017. Now it seems that the country is thinking about banning mining entirely.
Filed in . Read more about Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies. Source: scmp