As per a report from the local news agency China News, the Guangzhou Huangpu customs detained about 49 second-hand crypto mining rigs of the Antminer series from Bitmain.
This is the third incident in the country where the state seized such mining rigs just this month.
Crypto Mining Rigs or Shoe Material?
These mining rigs were initially exported under the pretense of being “shoe materials.”
However, the Dongguan customs’ superior department stated that due to the false declaration of these rigs, they have been detained and are pending until further proceedings.
As mentioned above within, this is the third such seizure as earlier customs departments of Shenzhen and Wuhan had detained 126 mining rigs and another 46 mining rigs, respectively. These were also found with false declarations and labels.
Although mining is banned in the country, authorities have not entirely stopped miners from mining cryptocurrencies.
Thus to deal with it, the Provincial Development and Reform Commission (PDRC) of Zhejiang suggested that electricity tariffs for cryptocurrency miners should be hiked by $0.08 kW/h. The notice stated:
“Different electricity prices are implemented for virtual currency ‘mining’ electricity, and the price increase standard is 0.50 yuan per kilowatt-hour.”
This way, instead of individually detecting and detaining miners and mining operations, the country intends on flushing them out by raising the electricity prices.
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Right now, the entire market is tumbling, and the prices of every asset are falling uncontrollably. Bitcoin itself has lost over 16.91% in the last seven days, which has led to the price descending below $40k, critical support.
Although at the moment, the king coin is faring slightly better as it is up by 3.21%, it still isn’t good enough.
This will further add to the miners’ problems in the Zhejiang province as their electricity consumption will not reduce, but the bills will pile up, and with the falling prices, their profit will be reduced.
As the business becomes unsustainable, they would eventually have to quit the mining industry, which China intends to happen anyway.