The Central Bank of China revealed on January 3 that, although they can not directly regulate the energy consumption of the mining community of cryptocurrencies, they can ask the local authorities to collaborate to do so.
The report published by the Reuters agency explains that these statements were given by the entity to members of the Leading Group of Financial Risk Remediation on the Internet in Beijing at the end of 2017. The authorities assured that they are in a position to request regional officials to supervise and reduce the electricity consumption of the country's miners.
Although it is not a direct call to regulation, for many this is a great cause for concern, because during 2017 the measures applied by the Chinese government to the cryptocurrencies were only in escalation, reaching up to the closing of the country's exchange houses. And with China concentrating more than 80% of Bitcoin's processing power among its nodes, limiting electricity for mining in the Asian country could translate into a further slowdown in the already saturated Bitcoin network.
The vice president of the People's Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, declared at the end of 2017 his personal position regarding cryptocurrencies, explaining that he supports the vision that bitcoin is a bubble that will disappear due to an event such as a network hack or a general prohibition. For him, cryptocurrencies are part of a financial bubble that can explode from one moment to another. It compares them with what happened during the tulip crisis in the Netherlands in 1600 and with the Internet bubble of the 2000s.
In September of last year the Chinese government absolutely prohibited any type of Initial Currency Offer in the territory, claiming that "The virtual chips or currencies used in this type of financing are not issued by the monetary authorities, do not have monetary properties legally as indemnity or coercion, they do not have legal status equivalent to money, and they can not and should not circulate as currency of market use ".