‘Unintentional gift’: US steps into China’s bitcoin breach

‘Unintentional gift’: US steps into China’s bitcoin breach

ROCKDALE: The long sheds at North America’s largest bitcoin mine look endless in the Texas sun, packed with the type of machines that have helped the United States to become the new global hub for the digital currency. The operation in the quiet town of Rockdale was part of an already bustling US business-now boosted by Beijing’s intensified crypto crackdown that has pushed the industry west.

Experts say rule of law and cheap electricity in the United States are a draw for bitcoin miners, whose energy-gulping computers race to unlock units of the currency. “There’s a lot of competitors coming into Texas because they are seeing the same thing (as) when we came here,” said Chad Everett Harris, CEO of miner Whinstone, which operates the Rockdale site owned by US company Riot Blockchain.

China was the undisputed heartland of crypto mining with about two-thirds of global capacity in September 2019, but last month Beijing declared illegal all transactions involving crypto money as it seeks to launch one of its own. Figures released Wednesday by the University of Cambridge showed that activity in the United States more than doubled in the four months to the end of August, increasing the market share held