China tightens its measures against cryptocurrencies and prices of GPUs fall

The People’s Bank of China has issued an order for the country’s main banks not to allow cryptocurrency transactions. This new restrictive measure results in the drop in the value of cryptocurrencies and the price of the GPUs that were used for mining.

The Chinese authorities have declared war on the world of Bitcoin and other cryptos. A recent report pointed out that the Asian country represented more than 75% of the hash power or calculations of Bitcoin. However, in recent weeks China has closed 90% of mining farms, partly reversing the chip shortage.

NVIDIA already warned at the beginning of the year that mining was largely responsible for the lack of GPUs available for other markets such as video games and applied to its RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 cards, the LHR anti-mining technology to balance the market. With this new move by China, the price of modern and old GPUs has dropped.

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The 14 nm Nvidia Quadro P1000 released in 2017 costs 2,429 yuan (315.72 euros) on JD.com and this year’s Asus GeForce RTX3060 has dropped from 13,499 yuan (1,752.97 euros) to 4,699 yuan (640, 88 euros), in Tmall, both Chinese suppliers. Some users have also noticed it on reddit, so the price drop would also be reaching the international market.

In its statement, the People’s Bank of China noted that “virtual currency trading activities disrupt the normal economic and financial order, create risks of illegal cross-border transfer of assets, money laundering and other illegal and criminal activities, and seriously infringe the security of people’s property“. China has shown its disapproval of this new digital market for years, but that had not prevented its growth among the population.

In addition to the negative influence that the crypto industry is having on the sale and shortage of processors for other devices such as computers for video games, and the reluctance of countries to currencies that they cannot control, such as legal tender, cryptocurrencies also They have earned a reputation as polluters.

The report published in Nature Communications in April indicates that emissions from this sector in China would reach 130.5 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2024 just for bitcoin mining if they don’t implement stricter regulations and policies. This puts a brake on the country’s plans to reach zero emissions by 2060.