Mining company BIT Digital, listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, announced the movement of 14,500 ASIC miners from China to the United States after the imposition of restrictive measures.
BIT Digital stated that after the ban on cryptocurrency mining in China, the company ceased operations in the country on June 21. BIT Digital began moving mining equipment to the US back in October last year, but given the current situation, it was forced to hurry up with the move.
As of June 30, BIT Digital had about 9,500 ASIC miners in China. The company plans to complete the relocation of its remaining equipment abroad during the third quarter of 2021. In the second quarter, the mining company took out about a third of the devices for bitcoin mining from China.
In April, BIT Digital had 43,606 ASIC miners at its disposal with a total hashing power of 2,423.15 PH / s. About 80% of the company’s equipment was located in China, of which 19,060 devices were located in the Chinese province of Sichuan, 12,830 miners in Xinjiang and 3,200 ASICs in Yunnan province. In the second quarter, the company sold about 11,000 miners. The BIT Digital management believes that these devices did not pay off the capital invested in them. Plus, traveling long distances to North America would be prohibitively expensive.
BIT Digital cooperates with the American company Compute North, which provides services for the placement of mining equipment in its data centers. Compute North plans to expand its geographic capabilities in the next 12 months.
Cryptocurrency mining is already banned in almost all Chinese provinces. The Chinese government fears that a large amount of electricity is wasted when mining bitcoin, and this has a negative impact on the environment. However, Pete Howson, associate professor of international development at the University of Northumbria in the UK, is confident that the massive movement of miners to countries with non-environmentally friendly methods of generating electricity will only aggravate the situation.
And the CEO of iMining Khurram Shroff sees only advantages in this. He believes that the dispersal of miners in other jurisdictions will contribute to the decentralization of cryptocurrencies.