Coronavirus Outbreak In China Forces Bitcoin Mining Companies to Shutdown

10. Feb 2020 Posted by Akolkar B on News

The Coronavirus outbreak in China has taken the world by storm as the world’s second-largest economy is facing major challenges ahead of it. Business operations in china have been impacted several due to this outbreak and Bitcoin mining companies are forced to shutdown their operations as of now.

To keep the situation under control from this highly contagious epidemic, the Chinese government has asked local business to keep their operations within limit. China has been one of the most-proffered destinations for Bitcoin mining due to availability of surplus and low-cost hydroelectric power.

Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, a mining farm BTC.top has been forced to shutdown by the government. BTC.top CEO Jiang Zhuoer’s published a post on Weibo earlier this week explaining the situation.

He wrote: “I have a mine in a remote suburb. The police came and forced all the mining authorities to shut down. It is understandable to take a regular… roll call, and strictly prohibit going out, but what’s the benefit of shutting down the mining machine to prevent the epidemic?”

Moreover, the Bitcoin halving event is just around 100 days from now in May 2020 and Chinese manufacturers have been facing high demand of mining hardware equipment. However, with the current Coronavirus outbreak, there’s a shortage of supply for the new mining machines.

This can ultimately have a major impact on Bitcoin network’s mining activity as the China-based miners alone control 65 percent of the total computational activity. Some of the Chin-based Bitcoin miner manufacturers like Bitmain, Canaan, MicroBT and InnoSilicon are already facing delays in their production and delivery.

Wang Xin, marketing director of WhatsMiner maker MicroBT, said: “The coronavirus outbreak timespan overlaps with bitcoin’s halving event. The dual factors are apparently affecting the maintenance of mining equipment as well as the delivery of new miners. As such, the recovery of bitcoin’s hash rate growth will be delayed.”