Chinese Bitcoin Crackdown Expands And ECB Officially Starts Digital Euro Project

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The Chinese government is in hot water. US press is focusing on their decision to remove popular ride hailing app Didi from the Chinese app stores (which has seen its share price dive as a result) and the communist leadership in Beijing is also hammering down its decision to slow down the mining of Bitcoin on its territory.

Latest region to fall foul is the eastern province of Anhui, where the central government claims that the imposed ban on cryptocurrency mining will, according to reporting in Reuters:

Help ease an acute power shortage over the next three years.

Anhui plans to shut down all crypto mining projects within the next three years due to a power supply shortage China dealt another blow to its beleaguered …Read more: https://t.co/MBT99ia5LT

— webnow🌎 (@webnowcompany) July 14, 2021

Meanwhile American and Canadian Bitcoin miners continue partying. Because of the lack of competition, their difficulty to mine Bitcoin has fallen to the lowest level in a decade and their profits are at the same height when the coin was trading at $55K.

ECB Digital Euro Project

The rise of cryptocurrencies took another major step yesterday when the ECB formally announced that it was launching its own Digital Euro Project. Of course, with China presenting its Digital Yuan to the world next year when it is hosting the Winter Olympics from Beijing, it is no wonder that the ECB does this now.

(THREAD) We have decided to launch a project to prepare for possibly issuing a digital euro. We will look at how a digital euro could be designed and distributed to everyone in the euro area, as well as the impact it would have https://t.co/KCf73qHOZ8 1/3 pic.twitter.com/eHvpFlH8sq

— European Central Bank (@ecb) July 14, 2021

ECB board member Fabio Panetta explained:

We will commit the resources necessary to design a marketable product. But a decision about whether or not to issue a digital euro will only come at a later stage. And in any event, a digital euro would complement cash, not replace it.