According to data released on Wednesday by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance in the United Kingdom, the United States has surpassed China as the world's top bitcoin mining country.
The data show the impact of China's State Council, or cabinet, crackdown on bitcoin trade and mining, which decimated the business and forced miners to close shop or relocate overseas in late May.
Data show China's portion of the computing power connected to the global bitcoin network, known as the "hash rate," had dropped to zero in July from 44% in May and as high as 75% in 2019.
Miners in other parts of the world have picked up the slack, with mining rig makers shifting their focus to North America and Central Asia, and larger Chinese miners following suit, albeit with logistical challenges.
As a result, the United States now has the biggest share of mining, accounting for 35.5% of the global hash rate as of the end of August, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia, based on data.
Bitcoin is created or "mined" by high-powered computers, typically located in data centers across the world, competing to solve complicated mathematical riddles in a process that consumes a lot of electricity.
Because of Russia's low energy costs and mild temperature, some enterprises were able to profit from bitcoin's rising values earlier this year by using surplus electricity, but there are mounting concerns about illegal mining.
Officials in some countries are more tolerant of bitcoin mining, even welcoming it, whereas Chinese authorities recently announced even stricter limits for bitcoin mining and trade.
After the latest crackdown, a representative for mining rig maker Ebang International Holdings told Reuters, "Our current emphasis is speeding the development of compliant mining farms in North America and Europe."
Industry players, on the other hand, are still scarred.
"As a veteran who experienced the industry's development in China, I believe the current scenario is regrettable," said Mao Shihang, co-founder of Cobo, a Singapore-based crypto asset management and custodian, and founder of F2Pool, once the world's largest bitcoin mining pool.
He remarked before the Cambridge data was released, "China is losing its share of computer power... the industry's center of gravity is going to the United States."
