Recently, I’ve been pondering an interesting question: What is mining, and why does this activity consume electricity equivalent to that of the 27th largest country in the world?

Speaking of what mining is, it’s essentially the process of using computer computing power to compete for and acquire Bitcoin. It sounds simple, but the underlying logic is becoming increasingly crazy. Satoshi Nakamoto mined 50 Bitcoins with a home computer back in the day, and the electricity consumption was negligible. But now? A single mining machine consumes about 35 kilowatt-hours per day, and the electricity used by a mining farm in one day is enough to meet the needs of an average person for a lifetime.

Why is this happening? Because Bitcoin’s issuance mechanism determines all of this. The fixed total supply of 21 million coins, halving of block rewards every 210k blocks—these mean that mining difficulty will keep increasing. Simply put, mining is fundamentally a competition where the difficulty keeps rising, and miners compete to grab increasingly scarce rewards. The only way for miners to survive is to constantly upgrade their mining hardware and stack computing power, evolving from CPUs to GPUs, and then to specialized mining chips. Once this arms race starts, it can’t stop, and electricity consumption naturally multiplies.

Reports indicate that before 2021, nearly 70% of global Bitcoin mining farms were in China. Miners would go to Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan during the rainy season to take advantage of cheap hydropower, then move to Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia during the dry season to buy cheap thermal power. Some predict that by 2024, China’s annual electricity consumption for mining will be equivalent to the power generated by 3.5 Three Gorges Dam. What does this number reflect? It’s a waste of resources.

So, from an economic perspective, mining is a pure zero-sum game. The electricity and resources miners consume are ultimately exchanged for what? A digital asset with no real application scenario, its value entirely supported by speculation. Bitcoin has been around for 13 years, from obscurity to surpassing $68,000. Behind this surge is no production value—only wealth redistribution and the continuous inflation of a bubble.

What’s even more concerning is that these highly anonymous digital assets have become natural shields for money laundering, drug trafficking, and scams. Bitcoin’s decentralized nature is fully exploited in criminal activities, with black industry chains using it to transfer funds. After El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, the country has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars during the bear market, and it may become the first nation to go bankrupt due to crypto speculation.

This is why our country is resolutely cracking down on Bitcoin speculation. From the perspectives of energy resources, financial risks, and monetary sovereignty, allowing the Bitcoin market to develop is essentially consuming the country’s strategic resources. Behind what mining is, there’s actually a threat to a nation’s economic order. Therefore, whether from macro policy or micro personal finance perspectives, crypto speculation is no different from gambling—it ultimately erodes individual integrity and wastes the hardworking spirit of the nation.