Author: odinn 2015-08-03 03:13:21
Published on: 2015-08-03T03:13:21+00:00
The dominance of China in the Bitcoin mining realm is a growing concern due to the country's centralized economy and state-run structure, combined with newly proposed or adopted laws. Recently, a draft of the National Security Law in China has surfaced which mandates the safeguarding of security in important industries such as cryptocurrency mining. Furthermore, another national security-related law is currently being reviewed which would require all internet companies operating in China to provide backdoor access and encryption keys to the government. This includes exchanges and mining operations. China controls 57% of all Bitcoin being mined due to advantages such as subsidized electricity, cheap manufacturing of ASIC chips, and natural cooling conditions. The only disadvantage Chinese miners face is bandwidth, but they have stated that an increase in block size would be detrimental to them. Critics argue that by restricting block size, the Communist Chinese government will maintain centralized control over Bitcoin hashing power. While the situation does not break Bitcoin for mathematical reasons, the effect of the Crypto Wars combined with Chinese mining dominance and development of new laws concerning further attempts to backdoor hardware and software is concerning. Despite arguments for backdoors in encryption by the US FBI Director James Comey, there "really is no way" to keep users' data safe while providing backdoors.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T18:03:50.121436+00:00