In Brief:
- Beepool will shut down its activities on October 15 to comply with regulatory policies
- SparkPool also announced yesterday to drop its operations from September 30
The world’s fourth-largest Ethereum mining pool, Beepool will shut down its mining operations from October 15, 2021, at 15:59 UTC to comply with the latest regulatory policies.
According to a notice, BeePool, the China-based mining pool operator, has suspended registrations for new users. In addition, the sub-accounts will also be suspended. It warned the users to bind their sub-accounts to an address to get paid.
The shutdown of China’s largest mining pools came amidst a renewed crackdown on cryptocurrency by Chinese authorities. The People Bank of China (PBoc) issued a notification last week stating that any action involving crypto assets, mining, and trading is illegal.
This announcement comes only a day after SparkPool, the second-largest Ethereum mining pool, announced to drop operations on Sept 30 citing similar reasons. BeePool and SparkPool account for more than one quarter of Ethereum’s hashrate.
Recently, Alibaba, China’s Amazon, said that it would no longer offer customized crypto mining equipment. CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, both of which provide crypto price data, have also been blocked by Chinese government censors.
The latest Chinese crackdown not only affected mining pools, but also cryptocurrency exchanges. Huobi Global, a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange, has also announced plans to stop serving existing china-based users by the end of 2021 and has already halted new user registration.
