Inner Mongolia to end the region’s bitcoin mining by April.

Inner Mongolia officials reportedly have plans to force cryptocurrency mining projects to close and / or relocate by April 2021.

The region’s cheap energy makes it a favorite for miners. But the Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission wants to reduce energy consumption growth “to about 1.9% in 2021,” according to Bloomberg. In efforts to achieve this, cryptocurrency miners are being shown the door.

Reports of the mining crackdown have fed seemingly perennial fears of a cryptocurrency doomsday caused by Chinese officials. In fact, this isn’t the first time Inner Mongolia has made the news for its plans to act against bitcoin miners. In September 2019 , the region reportedly had plans to inspect mining facilities and start forcibly phasing out illegal mining farms. Furthermore, in August 2020, 21 bitcoin mining facilities in the region were stripped off electricity perks.

It’s hard to know the full effects this latest initiative will have on the mining industry. Forced relocation would be an inconvenience to any miner. With Inner Mongolia representing a significant portion of Chinese hashrate, the initiative could accelerate the widely reported migration of hashrate overseas.


Old fears of China-related mining F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty, doubt) die hard, apparently. Unlike previous anti-mining initiatives that eventually dissipated after stirring up fear and uncertainty in the market, however, this latest news could have serious negative repercussions for Inner Mongolian miners. Yet the news could all the while not negatively affect the broader mining industry.

Bitcoin miners raked in a record $1.36 billion in February.

Bitcoin miners made a killing last month. In total, miners brought in a record $1.36 billion, based on estimates of daily fee, subsidy, and price data. The previous record was $1.25 billion earned in December 2017 near the last bull market’s peak.

Measured by per terahash per second (TH/s), miner revenues rose from $0.23 to a high near $0.38 through February before ending the month near $0.30, according to data from Luxor Technologies.

On top of steadily increasing revenue, the percentage of revenue represented by network fees continues to grow. Last month, fees accounted for 13.7% of revenue ($186 million), up significantly from 10.3% from fees in January, according to CoinDesk.

Fee revenue has been steadily increasing as a percentage of total revenue since May 2020. Curiously, fees represented a significantly smaller percentage of last month’s record revenue (13.7%) compared to the percentage made up of fees at the previous monthly record in December 2017 (23.7%).

Someone actually sent BTC to the “Elon Musk giveaway”.

Twitter is inundated with “giveaway” scams under almost every cryptocurrency tweet with more than a few likes and retweets. And some people actually send bitcoin to these addresses.

According to popular on-chain, real-time alert account @whale_alert, 6.01 BTC were sent to a “confirmed Elon Musk Giveaway scam” via two transactions. At the time of the transactions, the bitcoins sent were worth over $290,000.

Of course, there are some blind spots with these on-chain data. The scam promoters could be sending themselves the coins, for example.

But the bottom line is two fold: Twitter needs to eradicate these scam accounts, and anyone who advertises a bitcoin giveaway contingent on receiving some coins in advance might be a scammer.

Other Highlights

Bitcoin trying to reclaim $50,000 after weekend dip.

  • After setting record highs just above $58,000 last week, bitcoin dropped to nearly $43,000 and has been struggling to pare its losses since. Currently, the leading cryptocurrency is trading at $49,000 after briefly passing the $50,000 mark on Monday.

Nvidia says 2%-6% or Q4 revenue came from cryptocurrency miners.

  • In its Q4 earnings call, Nvidia said sales of GPUs to cryptocurrency miners contributed between $100 million and $300 million to total revenue of $5 billion. The 2%-6% from miners is just an estimate, the company’s CFO said. But with its new Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs), Nvidia hopes to be able to quantify exactly how much revenue comes from miners.

Lots of random companies are dabbling in bitcoin mining.

  • Institutions aren’t just buying bitcoin. They want to mine it too. From baked goods and tea businesses to emergency rescue companies to online lottery firms, lots of US-listed Chinese companies want to capitalize on the bull run, per CoinDesk. And while some may be knee-jerk, opportunistic ventures, some businesses are potentially well-positioned to mine bitcoin.

Malaysian police arrest 7 men for stealing electricity to mine bitcoin.

  • Seven men were arrested by Malaysian authorities for stealing over $2 million in electricity over roughly one year to mine bitcoin. 1,746 mining machines were seized.

Mining difficulty set to drop.

  • After several consecutive increases, mining difficulty is set to dip by a few percent at the next adjustment on Friday. According to data from BTC.com, difficulty should drop by 2.42% down to 21.2 trillion.

Michael Saylor is still buying more bitcoin.

  • MicroStrategy’s CEO Michael Saylor announced that his company has topped off its latest $1 billion bitcoin buy with another significantly smaller investment because he simply can’t buy enough bitcoin it seems. Saylor’s company bought 328 BTC for $15 million, pushing their total holdings to 90,859.