China crackdown chronicle continues with the Zhejiang bust

China has been harsh on Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies since the beginning of the year. In another crypto mining bust, authorities in China’s eastern Zhejiang region caught hold of a crypto mining operation.

According to the report by the Cyberspace Administration of WeChat, GPUs were set up in a publicly funded facility in the Zhejiang region of China. These Graphic Processing Units or GPUs were set up to mine Bitcoin and Ethereum in the facility. 

Authorities in the Zhejiang region of China were already digging into all such individuals or firms that had set up mining rigs and were mining crypto in public-funded facilities, education institutions, or government-owned firms since the beginning of September. 

China’s investigation for Ethereum mining equipment

According to the officials, 4,699 IPs were screened and arose suspicion during the entire course of the operation in the Zhejiang region in China. Around 184 IPs were picked that belonged to over 77 public firms. 

Out of these, the operation team visited around 20 of these firms, which included around 119 IPs. This operation team was composed of members from Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Provincial Party Committee’s Cyberspace Administration, the Provincial Communications Administration, the Provincial Public Security Department, and the Zhejiang Branch of the National Security Center.

Next target: to locate ETH mining rigs

The team’s issue was locating Ethereum for Filecoin mining rigs because they don’t require an extreme power supply as Bitcoin does. Also, Bitcoin mining rigs use application-specific integrated circuits or ASICs, which makes BTC mining operations easier to locate. 

The crypto mining crackdown started in May in China that caused a huge downfall in the hashrate for Bitcoin while Ethereum’s hash rate continues to rise. However, unit this point, BTC mining in China has been completely irradiated while the next target for monetary authorities is ETH mining operations. 

Zhejiang started this operation in September, while at the same time, Hebei, another province in China, has also started its own investigations on ETH and FIL mining.