Under the domestic encryption ban, small hydropower plants began to sell off their equipment. Is this "green development" really green?

According to the South China Morning Post, since the domestic ban was issued in May, not only has the price of minerals fallen sharply, but the current market demand for cheap energy has dropped sharply, and small hydropower mines have begun to sell off their power generation equipment. Advertisements for hydropower equipment on Xianyu have increased, while the price of power generation equipment has fallen under selling pressure.

"If you buy a hydroelectric power plant, you can secretly mine cryptocurrencies," one seller told the South China Morning Post, while three other sellers confirmed that a large number of hydroelectric mining plants have closed down since the government cracked down on mining. These hydroelectric plants often operate at a capacity of no more than 50 megawatts and are therefore considered "small" plants.

The country continues to put pressure on the bitcoin mining industry as its energy consumption and environmental impact have come into focus in recent months, with data from the University of Cambridge showing that the bitcoin network's carbon footprint has previously reached the equivalent of the pollution emitted by burning 61 billion pounds of coal.

Earlier this year, coal mining problems in Xinjiang caused the Bitcoin network's hash rate to plummet, highlighting the Bitcoin network's dependence on Chinese miners. Since then, Chinese provinces including Xinjiang, Sichuan and Yunnan have banned cryptocurrency mining, and many media have reported that miners have moved overseas. But in fact, considering factors such as relocation costs, policies, social and business environment, and infrastructure, the miners who can eventually move overseas are only some giants with huge scale and sufficient capital. The choice of a large number of small and medium-sized miners is often to stop working and wait for opportunities, or simply sell mining equipment and switch to other industries to seek survival.

As for the currently hotly debated environmental issues, it is more like a "sufficient reason" because the hydropower stations themselves use a renewable energy source and have almost no carbon footprint, but they are still involved in the Bitcoin mining ban.

One of the sellers said the small hydropower plants turned to cryptocurrency mining because they did not have government permission to connect to the national grid to sell electricity. But this in turn could provide miners with another option to continue mining activities despite the government's ban.