In this past week, our reporter has paid a visit to bitcoin mining farms in Sichuan province, which is home to some of the largest cryptocurrency mining operations in the world, in an effort to unveil the mining empire hidden in the deep mountains of the “world’s mining capital” during the rainy season.

The mining farm we visited belongs to BTC.top. The investment cost of the mining farm is nearly 100 million Chinese yuan with a total capacity of about 1600000 T. It can produce about 13 BTC every day.

Close to a dam, the mining farm uses electricity directly from the hydropower station. “The farm has a load of 120,000 kWh, which means that it can consume 120,000 kWh of electricity per hour. During a wet season, the mining farm has to pay tens of millions of electricity bills. Because of this, the farm can bring considerable tax revenue, which is a pretty penny for a mountain town,” said the operation and maintenance personnel of the farm.

While due to the local government’s ambivalent attitude towards bitcoin mining, the mining farm, keeping a low profile, asks us not to expose too many pictures about their operation to avoid involving in unnecessary troubles.

Over $1.4 billion of laundered money moved to crypto exchanges this year

In the crypto space this past week, apart from the sizzling DeFi, a report by a Chinese blockchain security company has led to extensive discussions and pose much pressure on crypto exchanges.

The Peckshield report shows that more than 140,000 BTC (worth more than $1.4 billion) associated with illicit activities including hacker attacks, the dark web trades and gambling has flew into cryptocurrency exchanges in the first half of 2020.

The top ten exchanges where most of the stolen funds landed were Huobi, Binance, OKEx, ZB, Gate.io, Bitmex, Luno, HaoBTC, Bithumb, and Coinbase.

Bitcoin miner maker Ebang wins 369 million yuan China Telecom contracts

Ebang International, the newly Nasdaq listed bitcoin miner manufacturer, has recently won the bid for China Telecom’s government procurement projects involving 5G edge computing.

Zhejiang Ebang Communication Tech. Co., a subsidiary of Ebang International was awarded 369 million yuan (roughly $53 million) worth contracts by the country’s third largest mobile telecommunication provider. Other heavyweight bid winners include telecoms giants Huawei and ZTE.

Beijing releases blueprint for blockchain-based programmable govt

The Beijing government has released the blueprint of its plan to implement a blockchain-based programmable government in the city.

The 145-page blueprint lays out steps on how the Chinese capital will host the blockchain-based governance project and grow with it. According to the blueprint, 140 government service applications are already on the blockchain.

Suzhou’s Xiangcheng District set up a 1 billion yuan blockchain fund

Xiangcheng district of Suzhou city has set up a 1 billion Chinese yuan ($143 million) government-guided blockchain fund to invest in or award promising blockchain projects and blockchain funds within the region.

Apart from the special blockchain fund, Xiangcheng district also announced a serial supporting policy to support blockchain industrialization in the region. According to the policy, blockchain companies listed in China can be awarded up to 8 million yuan; Key laboratories, science and technology business incubators will be awarded up to 2 million yuan; Blockchain leading talents can enjoy up to 3 million yuan of resettlement subsidies.

Earlier this April, the Xiangcheng district has been reportedly a test place of the digital yuan (referred to as DC/EP). Agencies and enterprises in the district were to pay 50% of local workers’ transport subsidies in DC/EP.