China's top internet-finance regulator, the Leading Group of Internet Financial Risks Remediation, has issued a communication to all local governments requesting them to "orderly exit" all bitcoin mining operations.
Read more here -> https://qz.com/1174091/china-wants-an-orderly-exit-from-bitcoin-mining/
At first, the real reason might seem that bitcoin mining operations consume vast amounts of electricity in a country where millions and millions live with unreliable or no power at all. Stopping mining pools, officials say, will help the grid to reach those that need power the most.
However, skeptics say that other measure would curb the crypto-hype without shutting mining pools down, like shutting down the exchanges, like other countries have done. Then, the real reason might have to do more with social issues, such as individual investors placing too many bets (and too much hope) on bitcoin. There have been records of people living under the poverty line that acquire debt to buy bitcoin miners.
This seems to be the latest control effort by the Chinese government. Power distribution sounds like a plausible, but unlikely, root-cause. Preventing individual bankruptcies may give the impression that the governemnt is doing the right thing. Perhaps there is a third reason? What if the Chinese government is trying to stay away from cryptocurrencies and the threat they represent to their (also very controlled) Renminbi?