According to prominent news site China Securities Journal, the new China crypto prohibition has pushed more than 20 firms involved in cryptocurrency-related activities (trading, mining) to relocate to Hong Kong.
Among them is Huobi, the region’s major exchange. Additionally, China’s autonomous province of Inner Mongolia has shut down 45 cryptocurrency mining operations.
China is losing more exchanges and miners.
China’s new cryptocurrency ban was officially announced in September, following earlier smaller bans — primarily against crypto miners — earlier this year, beginning in May, when Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla had ceased accepting Bitcoin due to its carbon footprint and urged BTC miners to switch to renewable energy.
Chinese authorities subsequently followed suit, albeit on a far bigger scale, by beginning to crack down on crypto mining operations in their regional energy centers.
Now, the China Securities Journal reports that as of Oct. 7, more than 20 firms involved in cryptocurrencies have expressed their strong intention to exit the Chinese market entirely, since all bitcoin transactions have been declared unlawful.
As previously reported by U.Today, the Huobi exchange ceased accepting new user accounts on Sept. 24. It then announced its impending departure two days later. However, Chinese crypto writer Colin Wu reports that this decision was taken just one day before the crypto ban was announced.
BiKi, BHEX, CoinEx, and Renrenbit are all expected to follow suit. Huobi has advised customers to transfer money to alternative platforms and wallets, vowing to cease operations entirely in mainland China by the end of December.
On Sept. 24, the largest Ethereum mining pool, Spark Pool, announced that it will also cease operations with Chinese members. As did NBMINER—a firm that develops mining machine software.
Inner Mongolia takes control of ten thousand mining machines. Other Chinese news organizations said that officials in Inner Mongolia, a Chinese autonomous province, seized 10,000 bitcoin mining devices. Approximately 45 crypto mining projects have been shut down in the region to date. This theoretically saves 6.58 billion kilowatt-hours of power each year or around two million tonnes of coal.
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