China Crypto Ban: Biggest Ethereum (ETH) Mining Pool to Shut Down

The latest Chinese crypto ban has already led to several foreign crypto exchanges including Huobi and Binance to terminate their services for mainland China customers and now it seems mining pools are next. The biggest Ethereum (ETH) mining pool in the world is called SparkPool and it announced the suspension of services yesterday.

pic.twitter.com/hLPamoSwk1

— SparkPool (@sparkpool_eth) September 27, 2021

The mining pool claimed its decision was based on regulatory requirements in China and it won’t be accepting any new users from September 24 from China. The mining pool said,

“SparkPool had stopped providing services to new users from mainland China on September 24, 2021 (UTC+8). A complete shutdown for all SparkPool services and operations for the existing users, at home or abroad, has been planned for September 30, 2021 (UTC+8) at 20:00 under the premise of ensuring the safety of our users’ assets. “

Apart from Ethereum’s largest pool, F2Pool another popular crypto mining pool show the following statement to their users on login

“F2Pool will not provide services to China. F2Pool unilaterally reserves the right to restrict or cancel services in specific areas. F2Pool may freeze or terminate these accounts.”

China’s Waining Effect on Crypto Market

China deemed all crypto transactions illegal and instructed key institutions to crack down on existing crypto mining activities. This is the second prominent crypto crackdown in China this year alone, the first came in April-May. However, with each passing Chinese ban Fad, the impact of China’s position on crypto has a weaker impact on the market.

For example, the first crypto crackdown orders led to a massive market sell-off resulting in nearly a trillion-dollar getting wiped off the crypto market. However, since the latest announcement by the People’ Bank of China, the crypto market has shown little slump. Most of the crypto assets fell by 3%-5% and recovered soon after.

The Defi market has in fact benefited from the crackdown as major Chinese traders ruse to Defi market in absence of centralized exchanges. As a result, major DEX protocols made double-digit gains yesterday.

About Author

An engineering graduate, Prashant focuses on UK and Indian markets. As a crypto-journalist, his interests lie in blockchain technology adoption across emerging economies.