The fourth-largest mining organization BeePool, has joined SparkPool, the world’s second-largest Ethereum mining pool, a day after it announced it will discontinue operations.
The fourth-largest mining firm has joined SparkPool, the world’s second-largest Ethereum mining pool, a day after it announced it will discontinue operations.
The two mining pools are responsible for nearly a quarter of all ETH mined, according to data from the Etherscan block explorer.
On the Ethereum network, mining is the process of processing and confirming transactions. People donate processing power to the network’s security; the more they contribute, the higher their chances of winning the ETH that is distributed with each new block created.
Mining pools function by allowing individuals to pool their computing resources and share the rewards, as the name implies.
The closure of China’s two largest mining pools coincides with the Chinese government’s intensified attack against bitcoin. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) issued a notification last week stating that any action involving crypto assets, including mining and trading, is illegal.
Since 2017Â when the PBoC forbade financial institutions from performing crypto transactions, the country has been gradually tightening its grip on the cryptocurrency, but its efforts have recently intensified.
Mining businesses in locations with inexpensive electricity were forced to shut down, resulting in a significant decline in Bitcoin hashrate—a measure of computational power on the blockchain that correlates to network security.
Three major Chinese payments organisations, including the China Banking Association, publicly reaffirmed the PBoC prohibition in May, indicating what was to come.
Recently, Alibaba, China’s Amazon, said that it would no longer offer customized crypto mining equipment, and Chinese government censors appear to have blocked CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, both of which provide real-time crypto price data.
Binance and Huobi Global, two major exchanges, have already ceased accepting mainland Chinese citizens, and Huobi has given current customers until the end of the year to leave.
According to CoinGecko, the price of ETH has dropped by 6.5 percent in the last 24 hours. It is presently trading for less than $2,900. Bitcoin has also dropped 4.3 percent in the last 24 hours.