Bitcoin bust: Chinese miners frantically 'fire selling' as BTC struggles to rebound

The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has fallen sharply over the last month, with the combined cryptocurrency market losing around $1trillion in value. Bitcoin dropped from over $60,000 (£42,200) to under $35,000 (£24,720) from mid-April through to mid-May and has failed to recover since with Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggesting in a tweet today he was ending his relationship with the cryptocurrency. Experts have been dissecting the crash, with many pointing to the tech billionaire’s love of rival token Dogecoin as being one influencing factor.
But on May 21, China also announced it would start to “crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading behaviour,” which is believed to have played a huge role too.
According to the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finance, over 65 percent of miners working on the Bitcoin blockchain were based in China as of April 2021.
And Robert Van Kirk, managing director of US-based tech company Kaboomracks, says miners are now frantically “fire selling” their equipment.
He said: “People mining there have realised that it may now be a riskier proposition to operate in China than they had anticipated. They may be leaving, regardless of whatever determination is made.”


