Today, China pulled the plug and shut down all mining in Sichuan, a province which is powered 90% by renewables. Now these miners have to find a new home.

Few hours ago, China pulled the plug on all mining in Sichuan province, which as per the Cambridge study contributes around 10% to BTC's Global Hashrate. We are already seeing hashrate drop in large pools such as AntPool which has dropped 39% in the last 24 Hours, Binance Pool (23%), HuobiPool (37%), BTC. Top etc. BTC hashrate itself has fallen to a 6 month low, currently it is the lowest it has been in 2021.

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Drop in BTC Hashrate in the last 24 Hours

As per CoinShares Research, around 43% of Sichuan was already mining from Renewables in 2018, and this number is expected to be much more in 2021.

Sichuan accounts for the highest share among renewable mining

All these miners from Sichuan are now faced with the options of either finding a new home abroad, or sell their miners for cheap. Chinese social media networks already are seeing videos of miners being packed into boxes outside an industrial facility. While it is hard to get on the ground reports from China due to the Great Firewall, according to few accounts institutional miners are already in the process of migrating overseas, while small scale retail miners are either selling their miners or adopting a wait and watch approach with regards to the government policy. In the coming weeks and months, mining bans are also set to be enforced in other Chinese regions like Beijing, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia.

One thing is clear though - the global Bitcoin mining industry is set to undergo a huge change in the coming months. While BTC hashrate has been concentrated in certain China provinces, it could now see diversification to territories like North America, Central Asia, Russia, Northern Europe and North Africa. This can be considered as a positive. However there is also a downside, as mining Sichuan was powered mostly by renewables, it would increase BTC's dependence on other fuels like fossils/nuclear energy.

Sources: Cambridge Mining map: https://cbeci.org/mining_map

Coinshares report on BTC Mining: https://coinshares.com/assets/resources/Research/bitcoin-mining-network-november-2018.pdf