shanghai cryptocurrency miners including hashcow and btctop have halted all or part of their china operations after beijing intensified a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading hammering digital currencies amid heightened global regulatory scrutinya state council committee led by vice premier liu he announced the crackdown late on friday as part of efforts to fend off financial risks it was the first time chinas cabinet has targeted virtual currency mining a sizable business in the worlds secondbiggest economy that some estimates say accounts for as much as 70 of the global crypto supplycryptocurrency exchange huobi on monday suspended both cryptomining and some trading services to new clients from mainland china adding it will instead focus on overseas businessesbtctop a crypto mining pool also announced the suspension of its china business citing regulatory risks while crypto miner hashcow said it would halt buying new bitcoin mining rigscrypto miners use increasingly powerful speciallydesigned computer equipment or rigs to verify virtual coin transactions in a process which produces newly minted crypto currencies such as bitcoincrypto mining consumes a lot of energy which runs counter to chinas carbon neutrality goals said chen jiahe chief investment officer of beijingbased family office novem arcae technologiesthe crackdown is also part of chinas steppedup drive to curb speculative crypto trading he addedbitcoin took a beating after the latest chinese move and is now down nearly 50 from its alltime high it shed as much as 17 on sunday before paring some losses and was last trading steady in asia elsewhere ether fell to a twomonth low on sunday down 60 from a record peak hit just 12 days agoinvestor protection and money laundering are particular concerns of global financial regulators who are grappling with whether and how they should regulate the cryptocurrency industrythe latest shakeout in digital currencies also stems from tighter scrutiny in the united states last thursday us federal reserve chairman jerome powell said they pose risks to financial stability and indicating that greater regulation of the increasingly popular electronic currency may be warrantedhuobi always strives to abide by the evolving policies and regulations of each jurisdiction huobi said in a statement to reutersbtctop founder jiang zhuoer said in a micro blog post via weibo that its mining business will no longer be open to mainland china while hashcow said it would suspend new businesses in china in a notice to clients btctop and hashcow could not be immediately reached for commentdirty businessthe annual energy consumption of chinas cryptocurrency miners is expected to peak in 2024 at about 297 terawatthours greater than all the power consumption by italy in 2016 according to a study recently published in scientific journal nature communicationschinese president xi jinping has pledged carbon neutrality by 2060china has already lost its position as a global cryptocurrency trading centre after beijing banned crypto exchanges in 2017eventually china will lose crypto computing power to foreign markets as well btctop founder jiang wrote predicting the rise of us and european mining poolschen of novem arcae said