China’s State Planner Dropped Crypto Mining From Its Phaseout Catalogue

China’s National Development and Reform Commission published its final 2019 industrial-policy catalogue on November 6, 2019 without the proposal to classify cryptocurrency mining as an industry to be eliminated. The omission removed an explicit national phaseout signal that had hung over Bitcoin miners and mining-hardware manufacturers since April 2019.

The chronology is precise. NDRC Order No. 29 was signed on October 30 after the catalogue had been approved on August 27, but the agency’s order page and accompanying policy explanation were published on November 6. The catalogue was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2020.

From proposed elimination to omission

The NDRC’s April 8 consultation draft divided industries into encouraged, restricted and eliminated categories. Item 6 in the “other” portion of the eliminated section named virtual-currency mining and defined it as the production process for bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The public-comment window ran from April 8 through May 7.

The final 132-page catalogue published on November 6 contains neither that item nor the terms for virtual currency or mining used in the draft. This is a comparison between two official records, not a claim that the agency issued a separate pro-mining declaration.

The NDRC’s November 6 explanation gives the omission practical meaning. It said activities absent from the three listed categories were treated as permitted if they complied with other laws, regulations and policies. It also described the catalogue as a basis for investment management and for fiscal, credit, land and import-export policy. Projects placed in the eliminated category faced prohibited investment and phaseout requirements; cryptocurrency mining avoided that classification in the final version.

Why the decision mattered

For Bitcoin, mining is the competitive computation that orders transactions and secures the proof-of-work ledger. China was a major center for specialized mining equipment and operating capacity in 2019, so a national industrial-policy directive could affect hardware demand, electricity access, financing and the geographic distribution of hash power.

The April proposal had created a plausible path toward forced retirement of mining projects. Removing the item did not create a subsidy or guarantee local access to electricity, but it narrowed one clear central-government risk. Contemporaneous Reuters reporting on November 7 characterized mining as remaining in a regulatory gray area and said the NDRC had not explained its reason for the change.

The institutional signal was therefore mixed rather than broadly permissive. The final catalogue treated mining differently from industries selected for national elimination, while leaving enforcement under energy, environmental, land-use and local rules intact.

What the catalogue did not change

The November 6 action was not legalization of cryptocurrency trading, approval of initial coin offerings or endorsement of bitcoin as money. China’s earlier restrictions on token fundraising and domestic trading venues were separate policies. Nor did omission from the catalogue guarantee that every mining farm complied with applicable requirements.

The record also does not support a causal price claim. This reconstruction uses no bitcoin exchange series, trading pair, intraday timestamp, volume dataset or common global close. Cryptocurrency markets traded continuously across venues, and the reviewed government documents contain no market measurement. The significance rests on policy exposure and mining infrastructure, not an asserted November 6 return.

Later context

Later policy must not be projected backward. On September 24, 2021, Chinese authorities announced a coordinated campaign against virtual-currency mining, and a December 30, 2021 NDRC amendment added mining to the 2019 catalogue’s eliminated category. Those later actions show that the November 6, 2019 omission was not a permanent settlement; they do not alter what the final catalogue established on its publication date.