New Data Shows China Still Controls 21% Of The Global Bitcoin Mining Hashrate

China is back with a vengeance. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, or CCAF, collected data “spanning the period from September 2021 to January 2022” for their latest study. The headline is that, ban or no ban, the Asian country controls 21% of the Global Bitcoin mining hashrate. Since June 2021, here in NewsBTC, we’ve been wracking our brains trying to figure out why did China ban bitcoin mining. Maybe we were barking at the wrong tree the whole time. According to the CCAF’s numbers, unsurprisingly the “US has remained at the forefront of Bitcoin mining and extended its leading position (37.84%).” For their part, “China has re-emerged as a major mining hub (21.11%). Kazakhstan (13.22%), Canada (6.48%), and Russia (4.66%) have been relegated to more distant places.” Let’s see what else can we learn from the CCAF’s numbers. Is China All The Way Back? How Did This Happen? As it turns out, the CCAF analysis uncovered numbers that “strongly suggest that significant underground mining activity has formed in the country”. Can we be sure that the explanation is real? And if it is, how did the underground China bitcoin mining industry surge so fast? “Following the government ban in June 2021, reported hashrate for the entire country effectively plummeted to zero during the months of July and August. Yet reported hashrate suddenly surged back to 30.47 EH/s in September 2021, instantly catapulting China to second place globall...