Chinese bitcoin miners eye sites in Quebec, Manitoba
China's Bitmain Technologies is eyeing bitcoin mining sites in Quebec, a company spokesperson told Reuters, as expectations of a potential Chinese crackdown on cryptocurrency mining make the energy-rich province an attractive alternative. Bitmain spokesperson Nishant Sharma said in an email on Friday that the company was looking at sites in Quebec and is in talks with regional power authorities in the province.. Bitcoin mining consumes large quantities of energy because it uses computers to solve complex math puzzles to validate transactions in the cryptocurrency, which are written to the blockchain, or digital ledger. While Beijing has not issued any official edict on the bitcoin mines, two Chinese miners told Reuters that local authorities had grown more unwilling to allow expansion and had started to shut down some mines in late 2017, as China clamped down on cryptocurrencies.. Hydro Quebec described a potential sales pipeline of around 30 large cryptocurrency miners after a campaign by the public utility to attract data centres to the province triggered a flurry of interest from bitcoin miners in 2017. The challenge for miners is finding existing facilities in Quebec that already have buildings and other infrastructure in place to use the large energy supply required for cryptocurrency mining.. In Manitoba, Manitoba Hydro has fielded more than 100 inquiries from cryptocurrency miners in the past three months about specific sites, a company spokesperson said. That is far larger than utility rate changes proposed last year in other provinces, including 0.7 per cent in Quebec, according to Manitoba Hydro data..
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