Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 90% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

China's environmental concerns over coal power are pushing miners out

Harry Pokrandt · 1180 How He's Making $30m/Quarter Mining Ethereum Blockchain · Oct 17, 2018 · at 10:44

Harry Pokrandt, founding CEO of Hive Blockchain, discusses how thermal coal usage and environmental regulation are impacting crypto miners in China.

0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.7s

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“The stuff in China, it's regional based, but, ah, a lot of that, ah, power that's being generated is coming from thermal coal. So and China is, is more concerned about environmental issues these days. So that's the reason why a number of the miners are getting pushed out of China.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

A significant portion of cryptocurrency mining power in China comes from thermal coal, and increasing Chinese environmental concern is driving miners out of the country.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Both components of the claim are substantiated by contemporary data and regulatory actions. First, research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) and studies in Nature Communications confirmed that approximately 40% of China's cryptocurrency mining capacity relied on thermal coal power circa 2018–2019, particularly in northern provinces like Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia during the dry season. Second, regulatory pushback and exit directives in 2018 and 2019—including the January 2018 multi-agency 'orderly exit' directive and the April 2019 NDRC draft catalogue proposal—explicitly cited resource waste, heavy electricity consumption, and environmental pollution as core justifications for curbing cryptocurrency mining operations.

CCAF benchmarking and academic studies (including Nature Communications) showed that roughly 40% of Chinese crypto mining relied on thermal coal, concentrated in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
A January 2018 central government directive instructed local authorities to guide crypto mining toward an 'orderly exit,' citing excessive electricity usage and environmental concerns.
An April 2019 draft revision by the NDRC proposed phasing out virtual currency mining on grounds that it wasted resources and polluted the environment.

Checked against

[1] cam.ac.uk [2] dialogue.earth [3] washington.edu [4] berkeley.edu [5] mdpi.com [6] ccaf.io [7] ccaf.io [8] time.com

"Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study" "2018" "coal" mining Cambridge "CoinShares" "bitcoin mining" "coal" 2018 OR 2019 "Xinjiang" "Sichuan" china bitcoin mining coal thermal energy share 2018 2019 CCAF china crypto mining coal Xinjiang Inner Mongolia hydro Sichuan 2018 china NDRC bitcoin mining ban environmental energy consumption April 2019 china crypto mining exit orderly exit environmental energy consumption 2018

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

China cryptocurrency miners thermal coal

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