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The last few days have been filled with posts about crypto mining and China. Honestly, it has been a little bit of a mess to figure out and follow since initially we were all getting information that seemed to contradict each other. Finally, though it seems that the picture is clearing up and China is going to clamp down on Bitcoin mining. People have had mixed reactions to this but when looking over the picture as a whole it became pretty clear to me this could be a fantastic opportunity for the rest of the world.
Due to lax environmental regulations and cheap cheap coal China was able to really build up a crazy amount of mining power. Other countries struggled to compete as especially Western and western facing nations have been doing all they can to move to renewables and improving the electricity supply that they have in place (upgrading the grid, making applications more efficient, etc.). Adding in the cost of the mining equipment it just priced out miners in the US for the most part though like everything in life this was not always the case.
When retail and institutional investors then became interested in Bitcoin this led to comments being made about wanting "green" or "bloodless" bitcoins. The biggest proponent I kept seeing about it was Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary, who was big about institutional investors not wanting China mined Bitcoin due to the ongoing tensions between China and the West. This year in particular more and more news had come out about moving Hashpower back "home" or to either the US or anyone outside of China. This solves a huge talking point that Bitcoin critics liked to use about 60-65% of the Hashpower for Bitcoin was either based in China or in China based mining pools.
With the growth of mining outside of China which had been occurring even before China began the crackdown the "push" by the crackdown will lead to a much more decentralized mining power structure! Also with Bitcoin becoming more and more accepted worldwide innovation naturally is going to be kicked into a higher gear to reduce electrical costs and improve efficiency. When you add in the push for renewables to be used companies would stand to benefit from partnering with local governments to build new/larger/better renewable energy facilities and be allotted a set amount of power to use! This would stand to benefit all as it would speed up adaptation of cleaner power generation methods!
All of this overall really shows how China's loss is the West and really everyone else's gain! It further helps decentralize the mining to where no one country has a dominance over mining and has the ability to help speed up renewable development and deployment! With the institutional money coming into play it provides these miners the ability to not only create new jobs but also help the communities they wish to mine in!
