Cointelegraph: Bitcoin Actually Benefited From China's Decision to Ban Mining

It's been 150 days since provinces throughout China started to ban cryptocurrency mining. That crackdown was expected to cause problems for Bitcoin, given that Chinese mining operations contributed more to its hash rate than miners in any other country. However, Cointelegraph argued that BTC actually thrived following the ban.

Perhaps the most important part of Cointelegraph's argument is that BTC's value has risen since China's ban. That wasn't always true—the price of Bitcoin dropped from about $64,000 in May to less than $30,000 in June. It's rebounded in the months since, though, with Coinbase putting its price at roughly $62,500 at the time of writing.

There have been other signs that the loss of Chinese mining operations wouldn't be as bad for Bitcoin as originally expected. The hash rate has recovered faster than many thought it would, for example, and miners have moved their rigs to other countries so they can keep their operations going despite the ban in their homeland.

Companies have also pushed to deploy large-scale Bitcoin mining operations in the last few months. Setting up mining equipment in power plants has become a trend, for example, as has establishing operations that rely on renewable energy sources so they can deflect some of the criticism regarding Bitcoin's environmental impact.

Cointelegraph also noted that losing China—with the exception of illegal mining operations that are currently being hunted down—helped decentralize Bitcoin. The U.S. accounts for about one-third of the hash rate now, per the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, but that pales in comparison to China's peak of 75 percent.

That probably means further regulatory actions will have even less of an impact than China's ban. Lawmakers around the world can target the cryptocurrency for its role in enabling the proliferation of ransomware all they want, but China has shown us that it may all be for naught.