Chinese miners are quickly finding themselves isolated from the rest of the mining community as Antpool and BTC.com both announced suspension of services inside China last week.
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Citing recent government overtures, two major mining pools announced their suspension of services for Chinese miners.
- Antpool announced the suspension of services for all mainland China IP addresses, excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan.
- BTC.com – a legacy mining pool now owned by BIT Mining – also announced suspension of services in China beginning Friday, October 15.
Antpool and BTC.com make up 18% and 11% of global hashrate, respectively.
Antpool further stated its in the process of moving from China to Singapore, similarly to many other crypto firms. Meanwhile, its cousin pool ViaBTC has yet to announce service suspensions.
Technical work arounds are always possible for miners, such as IP masking through a virtual private network (VPM). But the bigger takeaway is glaringly obvious: China isn’t playing around anymore.
The suspensions follow a slurry of other closures and service notices among mining pools after the September 24 ban on crypto-to-crypto transfers by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC).
- Huobi announced closure of Chinese based accounts on September 26 for its exchange. What that means for its pool subscribers is unclear.
- F2Pool suspended service to Chinese miners one day later.
- SparkPool and BeePool (30% Ethereum’s hashrate) shutdown September 30 and October 14 respectively.
One data point to watch for? How much hashrate leaves Antpool and BTC.com in the coming weeks. The value could serve as a heuristic for the remaining hashrate in China post-ban.
