After inspecting 30 cloud computing businesses, authorities in China’s Inner Mongolia Province have decided to raise electricity tariffs by 30% for 21 mining farms.
The Inner Mongolian government found that 21 firms on the list of audited organizations are exclusively mining cryptocurrencies, with no involvement in the big data industry. Therefore, regulators believe these firms should not operate at preferential electricity tariffs.
Reduced tariffs are provided only for participants in the regional market “Electricity Trade Center”. It has existed since 2006, and since October 2019, the number of its participants has reached 1,820 enterprises. Thanks to this market, firms have been able to cut their electricity costs by 30.01 billion yuan.
For mining farms with access to the regional market, the tariff is $0.02- $ 0.03 per kWh. For those who drop out, the price for electricity consumption could reach $0.47 per kWh, an increase of about 30%.
Inner Mongolia is one of the largest mining centers, along with Sichuan, which accounts for over 50% of the global Bitcoin network hash rate.
Previously, the regulators of Inner Mongolia planned to restrict the activities of all mining companies, considering that the mining of cryptocurrencies does not bring real benefits to the economy. Last fall, regulators said they would be checking mining companies more frequently and tightening control over them.
We remind that last week due to flooding in the Chinese province of Sichuan, the average three-day hash rate of the Bitcoin network fell to 123 TH/s, and the average daily – to 110 TH/s.
