Five Chinese provinces have now announced intentions to regulate or curtail Bitcoin mining activities entirely.  Bitcoiners are now cheerleading the process of mining moving West, particularly the United States.

Hashrate moving out of China is likely to happen in one of two ways:

• A large-scale movement toward the United States spurred onwards for a desire for rule of law;
• Or a further decentralization of the Bitcoin hashrate around the world with lots of places picking up some mining.

Regardless of the possibility of Bitcoin mining decentralizing geographically, today’s reliance on pools for organizing hashpower into blocks remains a technical challenge for the network that limits its decentralization. And it seems unlikely that is going to change until updates such as Stratum v2 are available for integration.

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Shipping mining equipment couldn’t come at a worse time for newly evicted Chinese miners. Shipping costs are bad – really bad.

For miners looking to move their ASICs overseas, shipping by sea is the most economical method, as air freight can be up to five times as expensive.

Sea freight isn’t cheap either. Moving goods by freight is measured by shipping containers, called Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEU). Some measure in Forty-foot Equivalent Units (FEU). The largest of vessels, like the Ever Given of Suez Canal fame, can hold some 20,000 TEU.

According to the World Container Index, the average FEU per trip (merely double TEU) from Shanghai to Los Angeles is up 197% year-to-date at $6,358 per shipping FEU.

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• Luxor joins Compass as a mining pool partner. 

• Compass expands its hardware offerings with Antminer Z15s. 

• MicroBT inks a purchase agreement with Compass for monthly hardware shipments. 

• Texas Blockchain Council added Compass as a new member. 

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• Kazakhstan plans to cancel tax benefits for bitcoin miners. 

• Miami’s Mayor wants to lure cryptocurrency miners with low energy prices and nuclear power. 

• Wattum announced a 50 MW expansion with Enegix in Kazakhstan. 

• Hive expanded their Sweden facility by 4.6 MW for a total of 33 MW in the country. 

• Michael Saylor-led Bitcoin Mining Council wants to fight negative media narratives. 
  

• Genesis buys 10,000 ASICs from Canaan.