Inner Mongolia proposes harsh rules for BTC miners, including social credit blacklisting

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China wants to stamp out digital currency miners and in recent weeks, it has become aggressive in its quest. The latest efforts are in Inner Mongolia, a region in China that once accounted for close to 8% of BTC hashrate. The region has proposed tough measures for those caught mining digital currencies, including social blacklisting that would deny them basic services like access to credit and even public transportation.

Inner Mongolia, which is in Northern China, had become a block reward mining haven in recent years. It boasts of very low power rates and a conducive climate that cuts down on the need for cooling equipment. However, ever since the Chinese government announced its move towards reducing the country’s carbon footprint, the region has been working towards kicking miners out.

As CoinGeek reported, the region recently set up a hotline for residents to report suspected mining operations.

Its latest moves are more drastic, the South China Morning Post reports. Inner Mongolia is targeting data centers, industrial parks, internet firms, telecom companies and even smaller establishments like cyber cafes.

In its new draft rule, the region wants to ban culprits from the region’s power trading scheme and revoke their business licenses. In some instances, it proposes shutting down their businesses altogether. At an individual level, the regional government proposes placing the culprits in social credit blacklist, effectively barring them from getting access to credit.

It goes as far as proposing that the blacklist bar the culprits from making use of the public transportation and even facing legal consequences for their actions.

The draft rules are up for public review until June 1.

Inner Mongolia’s heightened fight against block reward miners comes on the back of a larger Chinese government measure to cut down on the Asian country’s carbon footprint. According to local reports, the region was lagging behind its peers, and this didn’t go down well with senior officials in Beijing. As a result, it has had to step up its efforts to satisfy the expectations of the higher-ups.

The block reward miners in Inner Mongolia have started relocating, some to neighboring regions and many others outside China. According to one expert, this marks a larger pattern in the world of digital currencies as they decouple from Chinese influence.

Wang Juan, an associate professor on blockchain at Xi’an Jiaotong University remarked, “We are seeing the cryptocurrency market follow a path to ‘de-China-isation’ – first on trading and now on computing power, based on a series of stronger steps taken against cryptocurrencies and bitcoin mining last week by Beijing.”

See also: TAAL’s Jerry Chan presentation at CoinGeek Live, The Shift from Bitcoin “Miners” to “Transaction Processors”