China, a Bitcoin Mining Giant, Could Resurrect the Cryptocurrency in 2025

The Chinese government banned ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) as early as 2017. Exchange platforms were shut down four years later.

China is hostile to cryptocurrencies, but several courts have ruled that bitcoin is protected by property rights.

Several Chinese courts have established over the years that bitcoin is protected by property rights. Judge Sun Jie reiterated this week that bitcoin has the attributes of a property and that it is therefore legal to own it.

“It is not illegal for individuals to hold cryptocurrencies,” he wrote on the official WeChat account of the Shanghai High People’s Court.

This hostility is less pronounced towards the bitcoin industry. The largest companies designing the integrated circuits (ASICs) used to mine bitcoins are Chinese. The leader is Bitmain. Its market share was long over 80%. The second most important company is MicroBT, also Chinese.

In other words, Chinese companies control most of the market, and this dominance doesn’t stop there. Chinese miners once accounted for up to 70% of the Bitcoin network’s computational power. This figure is now closer to 20%, neck and neck with Russia, far ahead of Europe and behind the United States (~35%).

If miners forge the consensus of the Bitcoin network with gigawatts of hash power (the “proof of work”), pools are also an essential link. They are a kind of cooperative allowing miners to pool their computing power to smooth out their revenues.

Their importance lies in the fact that they are the ones who select transactions in the blocks. And again, China is in the lead :

It is certain that a good portion of bitcoins belong to Chinese entities that have every interest in the government lifting the anathema. The election of Donald Trump should help them make moves.