The consequences of the Chinese ban on anything crypto, including mining, have led to a massive flippening as the USA has surpassed China in terms of Bitcoin hash rate share, showed recent data.
The Demise of the Chinese Hash Rate Empire
Although bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency industry have been banned within China’s borders for almost as long as they exist, the country was responsible for the majority of the BTC hash rate for a long time.
In fact, no other nation even came close as the cheaper electricity in China lured miners in. Data from Cambridge University’s mining map exemplifies this dominance. For example, China’s hash rate share was over 75% in late 2019.
As the country was progressing with its internal bans and was successfully ousting miners, though, the number started to decline gradually. However, it has dropped to zero now, the mining map shows, as the Chinese authorities ordered all miners to halt operations and leave the country earlier this year.
By doing so, the world’s most populated nation harmed the Bitcoin network as the hash rate dropped by 60% in a few months. However, because of the unique way the largest blockchain is set up – meaning the self-adjusting difficulty mechanism, and due to miners’ successful relocation, the metric has recovered a lot of ground, despite still being away from the ATHs.
Years Later: The US Takes Over China
The decline of the Chinese hash rate share has allowed other countries to increase their presence. During the darkest days of the ban in the giant Asian nation, reports started to emerge that miners had begun relocating west.
One of the most frequently mentioned destinations was the United States. While some American BTC proponents were urging miners indeed to move there, some politicians, like Miami’s mayor, tried to lure them in with tax incentives and cheap electricity.
It seems that these endeavors have worked as the mining map shows that the US is now responsible for the majority of the hash rate with 35.4%. This means that the world’s largest nation by nominal GDP has more than doubled its share since April this year.
Next in line now is Kazakhstan with 18.1%, followed by the Russian Federation (11.2%) and Canada (9.6%).
