Recently, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection rarely announced that a provincial-level official was expelled for abusing his power to introduce cryptocurrency mining.
The first official was punished for mining involvement
On the morning of November 13, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission issued a notice. Xiao Yi, the former party member and vice chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, was expelled.
According to the report, “After investigation, Xiao Yi abandoned his original mission. Undermined the political principle of’two maintenance’. Serious deviations in the implementation of major decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee. Violated the new development concept. Abusing his power to introduce and support enterprises does not meet the requirements of national industrial policies. Encrypted currency mining activities. Illegal borrowing on projects and construction, causing bad effects.”
This is also the first disclosed case that a Chinese official has been punished for involvement in mining.
On November 10th, the National Development and Reform Commission organized a video conference on cryptocurrency mining governance. Report the monitoring and rectification of cryptocurrency mining, and deploy the next phase of work.
The meeting emphasized that all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities must resolutely implement the relevant deployment of cryptocurrency mining and rectification work. Earnestly assume territorial responsibilities, establish a system, and pay attention to monitoring. Clean up and rectify cryptocurrency mining activities in the region. In addition, it also mentioned the need to strictly investigate and punish the mining activities involved in the computer rooms of state-owned units.
Pan Helin, Executive Dean and Professor of the Institute of Digital Economy, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law said:
“China’s policy direction is to completely decouple from virtual currencies. Regardless of how the cryptocurrency prices fluctuate, this main line will not change.”
In October of this year, China’s Jiangsu Provincial Communications Administration conducted a comprehensive investigation of cryptocurrency mining in Jiangsu Province. Monitoring found that the export traffic of mining pools in Jiangsu Province carrying out virtual currency activities reached 136.77 Mbps. The total number of Internet IP addresses participating in mining is 4502. Consumption of computing power resources exceeds 10PH/s. Energy consumption is 260,000 kWh/day. From the perspective of the ownership and nature of IP addresses, about 21% of the people belonging to party and government agencies, universities, and enterprises were invaded and used to carry out virtual currency “mining” behaviors.
“This also warns that the industry needs to be highly vigilant to changes in corruption patterns.” Pan Helin said.