原文标题：《Chinese Bitcoin Miners Find a New Crypto Haven in Ethiopia》
撰文:David Pan、Fasika Tadesse,彭博社
编译：Carl，Techub News
Last spring, freight containers began to appear near the substation connected to the Ethiopian Fuxing Dam, Africa's largest, container containing many high-power, high-energy bitcoin mining machines.
This suggests that China's Bitcoin miners, who have been travelling from country to country in search of cheap electricity and regulation-friendly places since their expulsion more than two years ago, have now arrived in Africa.
Hit by political and economic retrogrades, Bitcoin miners in China are attracted to some governments with low electricity costs and friendly to the cryptocurrency industry. Ethiopia, despite still banning cryptocurrency trading, has allowed Bitcoin mining since 2022 and has strengthened its ties with China over the past decade, with several Chinese companies helping it build a $4.8 billion dam from which miners plan to derive electricity.
Giant dams in Ethiopia
Ethiopia has become a rare opportunity for all companies that engage in cryptocurrency mining, as climate change and electricity scarcity have led to a backlash against cryptocurrency mining elsewhere. Ethiopia has a particular attraction for Chinese companies that once dominated bitcoin mining but now struggle to compete with their current Texas-based rivals.
In 2021, the Chinese government banned bitcoin mining, and China's status as a bitcoin mining hub came to an abrupt end, forcing dozens of companies to leave.
It was also a risky gamble for these companies and for Ethiopia. A range of developing countries, such as Kazakhstan and Iran, initially embraced Bitcoin mining, but also began to pivot when their energy use could provoke domestic discontent.
Jaran Mellerud, CEO of Hashlabs Mining, said: "First, countries could run out of available electricity, leaving miners with no room to expand. Second, miners may suddenly be deemed undesirable by the government and forced to leave. 」
Nearly half of Ethiopia's population does not have access to electricity, making cryptocurrency mining a tricky topic. Photographer: Amanuel Sileshi/AFP/Getty Images
Industry executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing government relations, said Ethiopian officials were wary of the controversy over bitcoin mining. Nearly half of Ethiopia's population still lacks access to electricity even after the new electricity comes online, making cryptocurrency mining a delicate topic. But at the same time, it is also a potentially lucrative source of foreign exchange earnings.
According to estimates by cryptocurrency mining service provider Luxor Technology, Ethiopia has become one of the world's largest recipients of bitcoin mining rigs. Ethan Vera, chief operating officer of Luxor Technology, said Luxor closed its first major deal to ship equipment to the country in September.
Ethiopia's national power company said it has reached power supply agreements with 21 bitcoin miners, 19 of which are from China.
Nuo Xu, founder of the China Digital Mining Association, said: "Ethiopia will be one of the most popular destinations for Chinese miners. The association, which organizes exhibitions and facilitates the mining machine trade, is arranging a group of Chinese mining executives to visit Ethiopia.
A new growth market for Bitcoin mining
来源：Luxor Logistics
This table shows the market share of Luxor's customers in various countries in 2023. Hong Kong is primarily a transshipment hub for sending to other markets.
The willingness of Bitcoin miners to ship tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment to a country that has just emerged from the civil war in the north is a testament to the worrying political and economic environment in which they operate.
Bitcoin miners use a lot of electricity, so access to cheap electricity is a key competitive advantage, with electricity accounting for up to 80% of miners' operating costs. The University of Cambridge's Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimates that Bitcoin mining consumed 121 trillion watt-hours of electricity in 2023, comparable to the amount of electricity used in Argentina.
That's why low-cost electricity has over the past few years dictated where miners place most of their equipment: first in China, then in places like Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and northern Sweden, and more recently Texas. What these places have in common is that energy is cheap.
A bitcoin mining farm in Kazakhstan. Photographer: Meiramgul Kussainova/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Dependence on abundant electricity is also a major weakness, as it can put miners in competition with factories and households for electricity, thus exposing them to political resistance.
Alen Makhmetov, co-founder of Hashlabs, said that when Kazakhstan imposed new restrictions and taxes on miners, it essentially killed the entire industry. After two years, there are still 10 megawatts of power facilities idle in Kazakhstan.
In the context of global warming, Bitcoin mining is increasingly seen as a factor in global warming, despite miners' claims that they are increasingly utilizing clean energy. A study released by the United Nations last October estimated that two-thirds of the electricity used in Bitcoin mining in 2020 and 2021 used fossil fuels.
Cheap electricity
The world's cheapest household electricity prices for June 2023, source: Statista Research
Yodahe A. Zemichael, deputy director of the Ethiopian Information Network Security Authority, said that the Ethiopian government allows bitcoin mining mainly because the companies pay for the electricity they consume in foreign currency.
Yodahe A. Zemichael used terms such as "high-performance computing" and "data mining" in his written response, rather than Bitcoin mining.
Nemo Semret, CEO of local miner QRB Labs, said Ethiopia is heavily regulated, and he helped lobby officials to allow bitcoin mining. "Introducing cryptocurrency mining is a huge challenge, and we have been trying to get all the necessary permits from the government for the past two years. 」
Yodahe said the government has passed a directive to regulate cryptocurrency products, including mining, and the issuance of licenses "is taking place in the sandbox and is still in its early stages". But he declined to say how many licenses have been issued so far and whether the directive has been shared with industry players.
Semret said miners remain skeptical about how the authorities will regulate them in the long term.
However, for Bitcoin miners, especially Chinese miners, Ethiopia represents a unique combination of economic and political advantages. Some executives even see it as a potential competitor to Texas, which accounts for about a quarter of the world's Bitcoin hashrate.
Ideal climatic conditions
An executive at Bitmain said Ethiopia's ability to power bitcoin mining could rival that of Texas within a few years. The completion of the GERD project will bring Ethiopia's power generation capacity to 5.3 GW, 92% of which will come from renewable hydropower.
Ethiopia's power generation capacity will double once GERD is fully completed, the Ethiopian Power Company said. Hiwot Eshetu, the company's director of marketing and business development, said in an interview that the power company charges a flat rate of 3.14 cents per kilowatt hour for Bitcoin miners.
A bitcoin mining facility under construction in Texas. Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg
Vera of mining service provider Luxor said that while this is similar to the average in Texas, its interest rates can fluctuate wildly, making profits more unpredictable in the state.
In Ethiopia, prices drop once miners are directly connected to power plants, according to Ethiopian Electricity Company's Hiwot. Currently, the company has suspended the signing of new contracts to ensure that the process is well controlled and managed.
BWP, which owns mining rigs operated by miners from China and other countries, began shipping equipment to Ethiopia early last year. Last December, the company announced on X that it would open a 120-megawatt mining equipment data center in the capital, Addis Ababa, which is quite large even by Texas standards.
BWP CEO Vitaliy Borshenko said Ethiopia's advantages are not just in cheap renewable energy. Citing the advice of mining machine manufacturer Bitmain, he said that the ideal temperature for mining is 5 to 25 degrees Celsius, which coincides with the average temperature in Ethiopia.
Nuo Xu, founder of the China Digital Mining Association, said it was this temptation that led some Chinese companies to start operating without waiting for official approval. "Miners disguise themselves as factories or agricultural companies to get electricity, rather than seeking government approval to mine. Yodahe did not respond to a request for comment on such practices.
The confidence of Chinese miners is supported by geopolitics. China is Ethiopia's largest source of foreign direct investment and the largest bilateral creditor. Ethiopia's finance ministry said last December that the Chinese government and financial institutions had lent nearly $15 billion to 70 large-scale projects in the country between 2006 and 2018.