Chinese miners were cut off from power supply

Mining farms recently signed agreements with the Chinese government on new operating rules, now costing them a loss of 20 percent of their hashrate.

Government auditors began inspecting large mining farms in the Chinese Xinjiang and Guaizhou provinces, cutting them off from power supply during the inspection and forcing them to completely stop work. This instruction was given by government agencies to more thoroughly verify compliance by mining centers with the strict rules of the new agreement. At the same time, the enterprises complied with all regulations and completed the formalities of industrial and commercial registration, tax registration, social security in accordance with national laws and regulations. Despite all the steps taken, on November 5, the power was turned off without notice and an inspection was launched, and the power source has not been restored at this time.

Given that Chinese miners account for the majority of all Bitcoin issuance, the network hashrate this week fell by 20% to 42 exahash per second, according to the website Blockchain.info.

The farm's total losses are estimated at 1 million yuan or approximately $143,700 for each day of downtime.

It is possible that in such a radical way the government hopes to gradually eliminate Bitcoin mining in China, continuing the repression against cryptocurrency in general.

However, there is a more prosaic version of what is happening

 According to the latest information Bitmain, the world's largest Bitcoin mining company and participant in the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hardfork, plans to deploy 90,000 Antminer S9 devices in Xinjiang. Last month, the company began negotiations with local mining farms to host 5,000 of its devices on each of them. However, most cache manufacturers refused the company. That is, it is likely that we are watching a dirty game between a monopolist and small miners.

 It remains unknown whether this regulatory initiative will affect Bitmain and the BCH hard fork.