Sichuan’s deadline arrived for 26 suspected crypto mines

June 20, 2021 was the deadline set by Sichuan authorities to identify, clear and close 26 suspected cryptocurrency-mining projects already reported by the provincial arm of State Grid. The deadline turned a national instruction to suppress bitcoin mining into a concrete power-sector action in one of China’s most important mining regions.

The joint notice from the Sichuan Provincial Development and Reform Commission and Sichuan Energy Bureau was dated June 18. Contemporaneous copies and reporting said municipal and prefectural governments were to lead the work, with State Grid Sichuan and Sichuan Energy Investment Group assisting. Electricity producers were also told to examine their own customers and immediately stop supplying power to cryptocurrency-mining projects.

That distinction matters. The verified record supports a June 20 deadline for the 26 listed suspected projects; it does not prove that every mining machine in Sichuan was disconnected at one uniform moment. The notice separately required a province-wide search, immediate closure of additional projects when found, and reports on that broader work by June 25.

Hydropower did not provide an exemption

Sichuan mattered because miners seasonally concentrated there to use abundant hydroelectricity during the rainy period. Reuters, citing University of Cambridge data available at the time, described Sichuan as China’s second-largest bitcoin-mining province. The June order therefore challenged a common assumption that enforcement would focus chiefly on coal-powered mining in regions such as Inner Mongolia.

The policy signal was broader: the activity itself, not only its electricity source, was now in scope. On May 21, China’s Financial Stability and Development Committee had called for a crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading as part of its financial-risk agenda. Sichuan’s order translated that national direction into instructions for local governments, grid companies and generators.

This was an institutional shock to Bitcoin even though no protocol rule changed. Mining facilities depend on continuous electricity, specialized machines and physical sites. Removing power can take computing capacity offline immediately; moving that capacity requires transport, a host facility and a new energy contract. The order therefore increased uncertainty over where Bitcoin’s computing power would operate and how quickly displaced machines could return.

What the June 20 record shows

Contemporaneous Yicai reporting on June 20 said some large mines had closed, while two miners told the publication that their own Sichuan sites had not yet been affected. That mixed evidence is more useful than the sweeping claim that all Sichuan mining ended at midnight. It indicates enforcement was underway but does not establish complete province-wide compliance.

Coinburn makes no exact hash-rate or price attribution here. Network hash rate is estimated from block production and difficulty, so short measurement windows are noisy and cannot identify a machine’s location. A bitcoin price move would also reflect many influences and could not, by itself, prove a Sichuan-policy effect. The durable event-day fact is the regulatory deadline and the power cutoff instruction, not a precise count of machines switched off or moved.

For miners, the notice narrowed the set of viable domestic locations after actions in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Qinghai. For the Bitcoin network, it exposed the operational consequences of geographic concentration: a provincial administrative decision could remove a meaningful amount of industrial infrastructure while the network itself continued to accept valid blocks.

Later confirmation and remaining uncertainty

On July 22, 2021, the Sichuan office of China’s National Energy Administration confirmed that a June 18 notice had ordered generators to inspect themselves and immediately stop supplying electricity to virtual-currency mining. That later official response corroborates the direction of the contemporaneous record, but it also discussed reports of continued covert supply. It should not be read backward as proof that every targeted project complied by June 20.

As of the event date, the public record did not quantify completed closures, disconnected megawatts, affected machines or relocation plans. June 20 nevertheless marked the point when Sichuan’s mining crackdown moved from announcement to an enforceable deadline—without the province’s hydropower profile providing the protection some operators had expected.