It was not a single technical ban with one effective date, but a progressive regulatory crackdown: a May announcement by the financial committee was followed by facility closures and, in September, a joint NDRC measure that prohibited new projects, ordered an orderly exit of existing ones and restricted access to electricity, finance and public support.
The crackdown did not begin with one law that switched off the Bitcoin network overnight. On 21 May 2021, the State Council Financial Stability and Development Committee announced a policy of cracking down on Bitcoin mining and trading; provincial measures followed in the next weeks, while operators disconnected farms, moved equipment or sold it. Nationwide documents issued in September then established a more detailed and durable framework. [1]
NDRC Notice number 1283, published on 24 September 2021, ordered a strict ban on new projects and an accelerated, orderly exit for existing ones. Authorities were to identify operations hidden in data centres and other structures, deny new electricity connections, apply differentiated power prices, end financial and tax support and restrict lending. It is therefore more accurate to describe a coordinated administrative and energy intervention than a change to the Bitcoin protocol. [2]
The notice cited high energy use, emissions, low contribution to the national economy and financial risks. It placed mining among activities to be phased out and divided responsibility among central agencies, provinces, electricity suppliers, financial institutions and data-centre operators. Its practical force came from control over physical infrastructure and business activity, not from an ability to censor blocks on the open network. [2]
Using data from four mining pools, Cambridge CCAF estimated that China’s share of global hashrate had already fallen before May, from 75.5 % in September 2019 to 46 % in April 2021. The data covered about 37 % of hashrate at the time and extrapolated the location of connected miners; it was therefore not a complete census of machines and cannot reveal the precise address of every farm. [4]
After facilities were disconnected, Cambridge recorded the estimated global hashrate bottoming at 57.47 EH/s near the end of June 2021. The specific low occurred on 27 June; blocks were temporarily found more slowly until the network adapted through another difficulty adjustment, but transaction history, the issuance limit and consensus rules did not change. The episode demonstrated the difference between action against miners in one jurisdiction and shutting down Bitcoin as a distributed system. [5]
Machines, capital and specialists moved mainly to the United States, Kazakhstan, Canada and Russia, or waited for new connections. Cambridge reported 193.64 EH/s on 21 December 2021, close to the pre-ban level, and estimated the US share at 37.84 % in January 2022. Recovery did not mean that every Chinese machine had left or that the new geographic concentration was risk-free. [5]
The September mining measure must not be conflated with the parallel notice from the PBOC and nine other authorities on trading and speculation. That notice characterised virtual currencies as lacking legal-tender status and related financial services as illegal financial activity. The legal effect on a mining farm, exchange, bank or individual must therefore be assessed by the specific activity, document, date and jurisdiction. [3]
Even the later figure of zero did not prove the physical absence of every miner. Cambridge again estimated China at 21.11 % of global hashrate in January 2022 and linked the result to covert mining; it now also warns that the Mining Map’s last data ends in January 2022 and is historical. Verification must distinguish an official rule, measured network hashrate, a modelled country share and a particular operator’s claim. [6]
For the clearest picture, read this entry together with Mining, Hashrate, Difficulty Adjustment, Mining Pool, Proof of Work, ASIC Miner.
01Did China ban Bitcoin itself in 2021?+
Not in the sense of changing or shutting down the Bitcoin protocol. Authorities targeted mining projects, electricity supply, financing and services connected with trading. Chinese nodes and equipment could be disconnected or hidden, but nodes in other jurisdictions continued to verify the network rules and blockchain.
02Did the ban end Bitcoin mining in China?+
It ended the legal, openly operated industry on its former scale, not the verified physical removal of every machine. After an interim estimate of zero, Cambridge assigned China a 21.11 % share in January 2022 and linked it to covert operations. This is a model based on pool data, not a complete census.