内蒙古停止虚拟货币挖矿，究竟什么是“虚拟货币挖矿”？

近日，内蒙古发改委印发《确保完成“十四五”能源消费双控目标的若干保障措施（征求意见稿）》，明确提出全面清理关停虚拟货币挖矿项目内蒙古比特币矿场关停内蒙古比特币矿场关停，2021年4月底前全部退出。

Although Bitcoin is currently the king of digital currencies, its high energy consumption cannot be ignored. According to the Bitcoin Power Consumption Index released by relevant researchers at the University of Cambridge, the annual power consumption of Bitcoin mining is about 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh, 1 terawatt-hour is 1 billion kWh). If 121.36 terawatt-hours of electricity were used to boil water in electric kettles across the UK, it would be enough for all Britons to cook for 27 years. According to research, the annual amount of electricity generated by mining Bitcoin alone can meet the energy needs of Cambridge University for 744 years.

The famous "ghost city" of Ordos in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Dalat Banner to the north, due to the stable power output of the developed thermal power and the cold climate conducive to heat dissipation, the virtual currency mine owners have built China's largest bitcoin mine here. At first, this mining farm alone accounted for 4% of the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network. At that time, the annual electricity bill for the entire mine had reached an astonishing 100 million yuan. 70% of Bitcoin's global computing power is in China, and most of Inner Mongolia has become one of the largest mining farms in the world due to factors such as sparsely populated areas, abundant power resources, and cheap electricity prices.

The Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission proposed to completely shut down virtual currency mining projects this time, the main purpose is to control the production capacity of high-energy-consuming industries. At the same time, Inner Mongolia is mainly thermal power, and the energy-intensive industries pollute the environment, which is not conducive to the realization of the economic goals of ecological civilization and green development, and is also contrary to the decision-making and deployment of the central energy consumption dual control.

What is virtual currency?

Virtual currency refers to a kind of virtual money on the Internet. Such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc.

What is mining?

Mining is about generating a block every 10 minutes on average in the blockchain world. Many computers try to pack this block for commit. If you are the first person to successfully try this data, then you can get paid in virtual currency. This is mining.

Why is virtual currency mining an energy-intensive industry?

In order to shorten the virtual currency mining time, a lot of computer operations are required, and investment businesses must build large data centers for mining. The power consumption of this data center is very large.

There are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of computers in a large data center, and the annual power consumption is more than hundreds of millions of kilowatt-hours. At present, the total power consumption of virtual currency mining in the world is 130 billion kWh, which exceeds the electricity consumption of more than 180 countries in the world.

Inner Mongolia is a rich area for virtual currency mining

Most areas of Inner Mongolia are sparsely populated, rich in power resources, and many coal-fired power plants, so they are rich areas for virtual currency mining.

Relevant information shows that after government agencies conducted on-site inspections of more than 30 big data and cloud computing companies in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, they found that 21 of them were actually crypto mining farms, so they issued a shutdown notice. It is reported that these include two subsidiaries of Inner Mongolia bitcoin mining giant Bitmain and a subsidiary of Ebang International.

Therefore, it is reasonable for Inner Mongolia to list virtual currency mining as the object of rectification.

With the implementation of carbon neutrality and other policies in the future, will digital currency become more popular?

The above-mentioned people believe that in the current situation of high currency prices, rising mining costs will not put much pressure on mining farms, but it may lead to further transfer of digital currency mining projects (mines) overseas. It is reported that domestic mining teams have already transferred their projects to places where electricity costs are cheaper, such as Kazakhstan. Return to Sohu, see more