Exploring Illegal Mining Camps in Western China

This article was originally published by 8btc and written by Vincent He.Although China has shut down bitcoin trading platforms and deemed them illegal, its attitude toward bitcoin mining is still ambiguous. Now, 70 percent of the world’s bitcoins are produced in China, while 70 percent of China’s “stock” are in Sichuan, a western province of China, especially along the Dadu River, where there is plenty of hydropower.As bitcoin mining requires a lot of electricity, China’s bitcoin mining camps are often located in remote areas with low electricity charges, such as Xinjiang, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan and other regions. As a saying goes, “Sichuan is the natural ‘mining capital’ of bitcoin.”Due to the fact that nearly 50 percent of the revenue from bitcoin mining is used to pay for electricity, miners have turned to direct power supplies from power plants.“The cost is very low for the direct power supply of the power station, for it does not need to be integrated into the state grid,” said a senior miner. “Many mines are built directly in or near the power station, and they build their own substations.”A Chinese bitcoin mine’s factory building cannot be approved, nor can environmental assessments and construction reports. Mines may be suspected of illegal construction and power plants’ direct sales also violate electricity laws.The shortest factory building is on the Dadu River embankment, only a few meters away from the r...