Uptick in China’s bitcoin mining prompts debate on tapping energy surplus

A mild uptick in bitcoin mining in China has prompted calls for Beijing to loosen its restrictions and let the power-hungry industry tap into the country’s oversupply of energy, but experts said the likelihood of China ending its mining ban was low.

China’s bitcoin mining market share by hash rate rose from 13.75 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 14.06 per cent in the current quarter, making it the third largest bitcoin mining country behind the US and Russia, according to Hashrate Index, a data platform operated by US bitcoin mining firm Luxor Technology.

The Hashrate Index did not disclose market share by country before this year. China’s hash rate plunged to zero in July 2021, two months after Beijing vowed to crack down on bitcoin mining, according to 2021 data by the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI).

Hash rate is a unit of measure for the bitcoin network’s processing power for verifying transactions and mining new cryptocurrency tokens. CBECI mining map data showed that China’s bitcoin mining market share had already bounced back to 22.29 per cent by September 2021. The organisation stopped updating its map data in February 2022.

A representation of bitcoin cryptocurrency is shown in this illustration taken September 10, 2025. Photo: Reuters

The uptick in bitcoin mining activity in China this year coincides with increased calls from scholars for Beijing to reconsider its rigid bitcoin mining ban. In recent years, Beijing has escalated its crackdown on various cryptocurrency-related businesses, maintaining that they disrupted economic and financial order and were a breeding ground for criminal activity.

In an article titled “Reinstate Crypto Mining to Facilitate China’s Transition to Carbon Neutrality” published in March, Guojun He, professor in Economics at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the associate director of HKU’s Institute of China Economy, suggested that the country use crypto mining to help utilise its excess renewable power.

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