How would a Chinese Bitcoin mining ban affect Bitcoin?
I'm sure that most of you by now have seen news regarding the possibility of a Chinese ban on bitcoin mining. There has been a lot of speculation about what would happen if there was an official ban on bitcoin mining in China. First, I would to state that all of this reporting, to the best of my knowledge at this time, is based on rumors, for every one report that claims to be credible and real, there is another that states that it is all rumor and not rooted in fact in any capacity. But as we all know, rumor is plenty to garner national news attention for several days, especially with anything related to Crypto Currency or Bitcoin.
National news outlets have been reporting speculative propaganda such as a dramatic decrease in the overall new coin supply creation, which as those of who understand how the bitcoin block chain protocol works, this is not possible, due to by design, a new block is added to the chain approximately every 10 minutes and the mining difficulty adjusts accordingly every 14 days to make this is as accurate as possible. Meaning, less hashing power being allocated to the bitcoin network after difficulty has adjusted, would only result in making it more likely to receive a block award than previously with the same amount of hashing power, for those who continue to mine. Not to mention because of the staggering increase in bitcoin price and growing profitability, so much wealth has been generated by the industry leaders in this space that relocating to a more accepting and possibly even more energy rich nation would not be a problem.
This however would not have an impact on the price, due to the fact that the bitcoin supply would continue to increase at the same rate that it currently is. Therefore the price could only be affected due to pure speculation on how the market will respond to the ban itself. It is hard to say how the market as a whole would respond to a Chinese ban of bitcoin mining.
Most of us familiar with the space are familiar with what is referred to as a 51% attack, and there has never been a bigger threat of the possibility of this happening than in the Chinese mining scene, with nearly all bitcoin mining hardware, also known as ASICS, being manufactured in China, and access to inexpensive coal burning power positioned by design near power plants for efficiency and ease of access, one could argue that a Chinese mining ban could be a good thing for bitcoin, hypothetically reducing the risk of the 51% attack, if this became a concern or closer to a realistic threat.
So in short, as there always has been, there is a lot of speculation on bitcoin, and in this case specifically, the Chinese mining ban. But as far as bitcoin owners and supporters are concerned, there is nothing to worry about, if anything, this type of news gives all of us true believers an opportunity to pick up a few coins at a substantially reduced price. Bitcoin will continue to be mined, and the supply will continue to increase at the same rate according the the protocol, and this isn't the first, and won't be the last time that we are faced with this type of news relating to bitcoin and crypto currency.
@OriginalWorks