INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In the early days of Bitcoin's 2009 inception, China was the base for the biggest minerThe U.S
has become the world's epicenter for Bitcoin mining after a crackdown in China effectively eliminated the practice in the former cradle of
the industry. At the end of August, America accounted for 35.4 per cent of the global hash rate, a measure of computing power used to
extract the digital currency, according to a Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study published on Wednesday
That's more than double the activity seen in April.The surge in the country's relative share has been driven by China's move to whittle down
the industry to control financial risk
In the early days of Bitcoin's 2009 inception, the Asian nation was the base for the biggest miners tapping into cheap electricity from coal
and hydro plants.Now, Beijing's intensifying efforts to curb the cryptocurrency market, announced in May, is paying off
China's observed share of Bitcoin mining has effectively hit zero, the Cambridge researchers found
That's down from as high as a 75 per cent in September 2019 when Cambridge started collecting data
It's also a marked decrease from the 46 per cent level notched in April just this year. There's a strong possibility that covert mining is
still happening in China, but routed through virtual private networks that make it appear the computers are operating in another country
Recent increases in the hash rate in Ireland and Germany are likely the result of miners using VPNs or proxy servers, according to the
Cambridge research.Miners are seeking cheap electricity and welcoming governments to fuel the boom in the virtual currency that's
approaching record highs again
The token is up more than 370 per cent in the past year to trade around $54,650 with a total market value of about $1 trillion.In
Kazakhstan, the share of the hash rate hit 18.1 per cent in August, up from 8.2 per cent in April, while the Russian share grew to 11 per
cent, from 6.8 per cent over the same period
The researchers at the institute, which is part of the Cambridge Judge Business School at University of Cambridge, collect data on the IP
addresses of mining operators from mining pools BTC.com, Poolin, ViaBTC, and Foundry.(Except for the headline, this story has not been
edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
