China’s hydropower plants will be sold when crypto miners leave the country

Small hydropower plants in China are reportedly looking for new customers as crypto miners go overseas amid a nationwide mining crackdown.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), advertisements for small hydropower plants with an output of 50 megawatts have increased on old Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Xianyu.

According to SCMP, some sellers claim that their bids have nothing to do with the cryptocurrency mining industry, while others say their bids are the result of recent crackdowns against the cryptocurrency mining industry.

A seller reported that small dams rely on cryptocurrency miners as their customer base because government agencies and environmental protection agencies have not allowed them to be connected to the grid.

“You can secretly mine cryptocurrency when you buy a hydropower plant,” a seller told SCMP.

The news comes as Chinese Bitcoin (BTC) miners invest or relocate their operations to other countries. Bitmain, the world’s largest provider of crypto mining equipment, reportedly stopped spot sales of its new crypto miners worldwide last week to avoid damaging customers in connection with massive sales in the secondary market. Several key industry players, including Bitmain rival Canaan and large mining pool BTC.com, have moved their operations to more crypto-mining-friendly countries like Kazakhstan.

Connected: Nvidia GPU prices in China are falling amid the crackdown on crypto mining

Meanwhile, GPU prices have plummeted on the mainland. Some reports suggest that this is the result of lower demand from cryptocurrency miners. Asus’ RTX 3060 card retailed earlier this month for $ 730, compared to its peak of $ 2,100 on JD.com’s online retail site Tmall in May.