Bitmain says it will no longer ship bitcoin miners in mainland China

Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain will no longer deliver its machines to mainland China addresses.

The Beijing-based firm announced the news on Sunday, saying that it will follow local regulations and suspend domestic delivery starting from Monday, but overseas business remains as usual. 

Bitmain's move may not impact the company much as its domestic sales had been declining since late last year amid the rise of North American mining operations. The company's move perhaps formally marks the end of its domestic market share, which accounted for nearly 50% of its revenues in 2017 and about 40% in the first half of 2018.

At-home mining

There has been a growing number of at-home mining operations in China with graphics processing units (GPUs), but Chinese authorities have been reinforcing their measures in sniffing out secret mining activities.

For instance, China's Jiangsu provincial government recently conducted a probe into local energy consumption and mining pool IP traffic. It detected over 4,502 IP addresses in the province that were suspected of mining activities and consumed 260,000 kilowatt-hour of energy. Interestingly, 21% of those mining IP addresses were found to be inside government agencies, public schools, and enterprises.

Some Chinese miners have also been recently sharing anecdotes of them receiving calls from local energy and telecommunication bureaus, who questioned them over mining suspicion and sent staff for on-site inspection because of their abnormal energy consumption, based on group chat messages seen by The Block.