Did China just quietly became the third largest Bitcoin miner again despite the 2021 ban still being in effect
Discussion
China is back to roughly 14 percent of global $BTC
mining hashrate, which puts them in third place again behind the us and russia by recent estimates. this is wild considering mining was banned in 2021 and their visible share collapsed right after that.
the comeback is happening especially in power rich regions like xinjiang, where miners say cheap electricity and excess data center capacity make underground mining hard to resist. a miner named wang told reuters he started operating late last year, saying a lot of xinjiang power can’t be transmitted out so people end up consuming it through mining, and new projects are still being built.
hardware sales back this up. canaan, the second largest mining rig maker, got about 2.8 percent of its revenue from china in 2022, that jumped to 30.3 percent in 2024, and a source with direct knowledge told reuters china was over 50 percent of sales in q2 2025. canaan did not confirm the q2 split but acknowledged stronger china demand.
the government hasn’t officially changed its stance. the ban is still on the books, but significant capacity is operating anyway, suggesting enforcement is uneven and incentives are winning in certain provinces.
there are also signs of a more nuanced posture on digital assets. hong kong’s stablecoin licensing regime went live in august, and reuters has reported mainland officials weighing yuan backed stablecoins for cross border use. that doesn’t mean a full reversal, but it fits with miners sensing softer edges.
the ceo of perpetuals dot com called the resurgence one of the most important signals the market has seen in years. it also reopens the centralization debate, since the us russia and china together account for about two thirds of hashrate by current estimates.
bottom line, economic incentives are beating policy. cheap power and profitable mining make a total crackdown hard to sustain.$XRP
