Severe weather in China over the past few weeks has severely affected cryptocurrency operations in Sichuan province, with floodwaters halting operations at some of the mines, local blockchain and crypto information platform Golden Finance reported.
Golden Finance said that of “tens of thousands" of mining devices had been lost when flooding hit a major digital currency mining operation in Sichuan. It added that most of the miners are resigned that the machines are "almost impossible" to repair.
“According to statistics, 70% of the world's cryptocurrency mining machines are in China, while Sichuan mining machines account for 70% of the country's total,” Golden Finance said.
It added, "Sichuan is the center of the world's mines. Just before the flood disaster occurred, there were still a large number of mining machines hosting orders from the Sichuan mine. From the photographs, these mines are generally built in deep mountain villages, and the housing is relatively simple. When the flood disaster struck, the mines had no power in the face of a big natural disaster."
A separate report by the Chinese official news website China News Service (CNS) states that continuous heavy rain hit most of China last month, affecting a large swath of the country and causing severe economic losses.
It said the storms damaged at least 8,360 hectares of crops and 46 houses, with an estimated economic loss amounting to $111 million (733 million yuan). The country's National Meteorological Center said it expects more rainfall to come in the coming days.
An analysis by Golden Finance has found a significant drop in the calculation power of the whole mining network in Sichuan since June 24, with the calculation power of the entire network reaching its lowest value of nearly 20 days on June 27, “which coincides with the time of Sichuan flood disaster.”
“Therefore, the reason for the decline in the overall network computing power is likely to be related to flood disasters,” it said. And added, “At present, there is no specific loss data for Sichuan mines. However, from the area of the affected areas, at least tens of thousands of mining machines have been flooded.”
The claim that China controls a huge chunk of the crypto mining sector is shared by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who said during the Stifel Financial 2018 Cross Sector Insight Conference that Chinese pools mostly control Bitcoin's hashing power.
He said:
“A number of prominent people, even Steve Wozniak, has said that he sees a world where Bitcoin is the primary currency. I think that’s absurd. I don’t think that any major economy will allow that to happen. By the way, it doesn’t make sense. I’ll tell you another story that is underreported, but worth paying attention to. Bitcoin is really controlled by China. There are four miners in China that control over 50% of Bitcoin. How do we know that China won’t intervene? How many countries want to use a Chinese-controlled currency? It’s just not going to happen.”
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
