It’s been a black streak since China decided to ban cryptocurrency activities (for good this time?). Indeed, the miners of the Ethereum network (ETH) are still operating massively on Chinese soil, unlike those of Bitcoin who have already fled the authoritarian country. The managers of the miners’ conglomerate Bepool have just thrown in the towel.
Number 2 and number 4 ETH miners wiped off the map
China doesn’t seem to have made idle threats with its new announcement of restrictions on crypto-assets. The one-party country has indeed issued guidelines not only for crypto-related activities on its soil, but also against foreign companies that would offer their services to Chinese nationals.
As a result, the second largest ether mining pool, Sparkpool, recently announced it was closing its doors. But the slaughter is not over, since this time, it is the fourth most productive Ethereum pool that must give up its apron: Beepool.
The pool announced, this September 28, that it would stop its mining activities from October 15, after 4 years of good and loyal service:
“Dear users, in response to the latest [Chinese] regulatory policy, we are implementing the following measures for an orderly exit:
- Registration of new users and addition of sub-accounts will cease with immediate effect;
- All servers related to mining activities will cease operation at [6:00 p.m. UK time] on October 15, 2021.”
Until October 31 to get things in order
In the above message, Bepool teams confirm that they will indeed pay out all winnings generated during this release phase, under the same conditions as usual. However, pool users are advised to anticipate this exit.
Also, the message urges sub-account owners to link their accounts to payment addresses as soon as possible, because after October 31st at 11:59 pm, any unlinked account will be “considered abandoned” and withdrawals of winnings will no longer be possible.
With the closure of Sparkpool and now Bepool, almost a quarter of the hashrate (computing power) on the Ethereum network will disappear, at least temporarily.
Because it could be that quite quickly, as it was the case for the miners on the Bitcoin network, that the ETH mining machines are exiled to more clement skies. A momentary drop in hashing power on the Ethereum network should still be clearly felt, before this eventual return to normal, which has taken the Bitcoin network almost four months.
