Bitcoin Controlled by China, Trump’s Suspicions Continue
Reporters and late-night talk show hosts found Bitcoin (BTC) after rifling through purloined copies of John Bolton’s forthcoming ‘The Room Where It Happened.’ Also, they discovered backstabbing and betrayal, bombshells, and buffoonery.
The anecdote from Bolton’s book disclosed that President Trump had a distaste for Bitcoin back in May 2018. This was when president chastised Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s approach to China trade negotiations.
Trump allegedly stated, “Don’t be a trade negotiator.”
Then, Bolton also noted that the president said to go after Bitcoin for fraud.
Mnuchin explained that if they don’t want him in trade, the economic team will execute anything they want. This is a response to a tense exchange over the forthcoming trade sanctions and tariffs on China.
However, Trump somehow knew that China manages Bitcoin. Then, Mnuchin is looking like he does not care. Certainly, Trump’s administration has supported Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) – at the expense of American-made cryptos. And this occurred as China has tightened its hold on Bitcoin and ether mining.
Two Crypto Securities
All of this began on June 14, 2018. After Bill Hinman, the SEC’s Director of Corporation Finance announced an unexpected new policy toward the two crypto securities at Yahoo! Finance conference in San Francisco.
Hinman said, “As with Bitcoin, applying the disclosure regime of the federal securities laws to the current transaction in Ether would seem to add little value.” He further indicates that they seem to have securities at the beginning. But eventually, it reached decentralization from any one enterprise.
In addition to that, the SEC followed up with institutionalized support for Bitcoin and Ethereum on November 16, 2018, with ‘A Statement on Digital Asset Securities Issuance and Trading.’
The report singled out security enforcement actions, including AirFox, Paragon, TokenLot, Crypto Asset Management, and EtherDelta’s founder Zachary Coburn. It further blesses Bitcoin and Ethereum.
In China
With that, China has doubled down its support for Bitcoin and ether mining on its shores. Back in December 2019, CoinShares research studies changes in the hashrate of Bitcoin. And they saw massive activity in China more than ever before.
As the Chinese government gives mixed signals about its support of blockchain, it somehow allowed miners to access some of the cheapest power in the world for the mining of Bitcoin and Ether. They found out that as much as 65% of BTC hashpower resides within China. And this has been the highest since they started network monitoring in late 2017.
Now, much of that came from the Sichuan province, with 90,000 MW of hydroelectric power. According to CoinShares, Sichuan generates 54% of global hashrate. Then, the remaining 11% distributes more or less evenly among Inner Mongolia, Xinjian, and Yunnan.
Aside from that, Chinese computer manufacturers were funneling the best latest chips and hardware to the miners. Also, CoinShared revealed that Beijing-based computer maker Bitmain operates 66% of the global crypto mining business. And this includes high-powered machines first introduced in 2018 dedicated to ether mining.
On the other hand, compared with Bitcoin, they did not carefully study the location of Ethereum’s hashrate. Still, the mining pool concentration hints that miners from China also dominates Ether.
