Bitcoin Pulls Back as China Announces Crypto Mining Clamp Down

China is now extending its anti-crypto stance to the mining industry as one of the Chinese government officials called for a crackdown on cryptocurrency mining.

In a Financial Stability Committee of the State Council meeting held on Friday, China’s Vice Premier, Liu He, specifically mentioned that the country will clamp down the crypto mining and trading activities.

Looking Forward to Meeting You at iFX EXPO Dubai May 2021 – Making It Happen!

“We should be more alert and look for potential risks,” Liu said, according to the meeting records. “We should crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading activities and prevent individual risks from being passed to the whole society.”

This push back for the cryptocurrency industry from China came only a couple of days after the country’s government and two associations of payments and the internet industry reiterated the illegality of the cryptocurrency transactions in the country.

The impact of the fresh hostility can also be seen in the cryptocurrency spot markets as Bitcoin prices hover around $37,000, down from the $41,000 peak achieved after Wednesday’s crash.

Apart from Bitcoin, the entire crypto market too took a step backward.

The Bitcoin Mining Hub

Crypto exchanges are banned in China, but the country is still one of the largest Bitcoin mining hubs. Though the exact magnitude of the industry is not known, some estimates put the share of Chinese crypto mining at around 70 percent. However, this figure is believed to have gone down with many international markets attracting crypto miners.

Now, any crackdown on the existing Chinese crypto mining markets might heavily impact the overall cryptocurrency industry, which attracted a ton of institutional players in the western countries.