China is ramping up its hunt for illegal cryptocurrency miners, who are trying to disguise their operations as research institutions and data centers, according to a new report.
Authorities in several provinces have conducted more intense inspections of colleges, research labs, data centers and other potential sites that could be hiding crypto mines, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
China’s government has framed its ongoing crackdown on crypto as an effort to reduce the country’s carbon emissions. The recent escalation is in part due to authorities’ concerns about power supplies ahead of cold winter weather, according to the report.
Some Chinese crypto mining tycoons have fled the country for Kazakhstan, Canada, the state of Texas and other areas with cheap power and friendlier laws. Other crypto users have been locked up on fraud and money laundering charges.
But crypto miners who remain in China have become increasingly resourceful in evading authorities, according to Bloomberg.
One unnamed miner told the outlet that he regularly moves his mining rigs between locations to make his activity harder for authorities to trace.
In a Wednesday statement, authorities in the Chinese province of Hebei urged companies to “strictly prevent the use of system computing power to engage in illegal virtual currency mining.”
“Virtual currency mining consumes huge energy, which runs counter to my country’s goal of ‘carbon neutrality and carbon peak,’” government groups in the province said. “Its proliferation and spread will seriously affect economic and social development and directly threaten national security.”
China had been responsible for about 46 percent of crypto mining around the globe before the government’s crackdown, which began around May of this year and helped send bitcoin’s price tumbling from its April peak of about $65,000 to less than $33,000 by June.
But bitcoin has somewhat recovered since June, trading higher than $52,000 in early September.
Bitcoin was trading at about $48,075 around mid-day on Thursday.