China has the world's biggest cryptocurrency mining farms and prices have also increased but despite this, the country wants to get rid of the bitcoin mining due to the assumptions that it has been dragging the economy.
Likewise, according to Asia One, the state planner of China is considering the ban on bitcoin mining and this fact has been revealed through the draft list of industries that it wants to eliminate, restrict or promote for economic reasons.
China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planning agency, stated earlier this week that it is seeking the opinion of the public with regards to the companies included in the revised list of industries to ban. It was said that the list was originally released in 2011 and today, the agency is mulling on carrying out the restriction on some of the listed sectors.
In the said revised draft, cryptocurrency mining including the bitcoin has been added to more than 450 sectors that the NDRC is considering phasing out due to several reasons such as their failure to comply with relevant laws and regulations, they are not safe, polluting the environment or just wasting resources.
"The NDRC's move is in line overall with China's desire to control different layers of the rapidly growing crypto industry, and does not yet signal a major shift in policy," The New York Times quoted Jehan Chu, managing partner at Kenetic, a blockchain investment firm, as saying.
"I believe China simply wants to 'reboot' the crypto industry into one that they have oversight on, the same approach they took with the Internet," she added.
On the other hand, other bitcoin miners relayed that China's ban on cryptocurrency mining is not surprising because it only wastes a lot of energy.
At any rate, crypto mining is a process of producing bitcoin and other digital currencies by using computing power. China has been recorded as the nation with the most traded cryptocurrency in the world. Recently, the country experienced a surge in its price and is now at around US$5,200 which is the highest level in the last four months, South China Morning Post reported.
The world's largest crypto mining farms are based in China and this is because of the nation's cheap electricity. Meanwhile, it was not stated when the bitcoin mining in China is set to be banned but the public has until May 7 to agree, challenge or simply comment on the revised draft that will phase out the crypto industry.
