Chinese nationals in Angola have been urged by the Chinese embassy to cease cryptocurrency mining.
The “Law on the Prohibition of Cryptocurrency and Other Virtual Asset Mining” of Angola formally took effect on April 10, according to a notice from the Chinese Embassy.
This statute makes it a crime to mine cryptocurrencies; offenders face terms of one to twelve years in jail. In an effort to safeguard the nation’s electrical infrastructure from the massive power demands posed by cryptocurrency mining operations, the law seeks to prohibit organized cryptocurrency mining networks.
On February 28th, legislators in Angola passed a bill to criminalize and outlaw cryptocurrency mining. The measure aims to punish severely, up to jail, anybody found guilty of cryptocurrency mining using computer systems and related equipment.
The bill expresses official disapproval of the impact that bitcoin mining has on the country’s power grid. There has been concern about the reliability of the residential electrical supply due to the 9.6 MW of power that mining activities require every day, which is enough to power 3,000 homes.
Given the present daily demand of 5,500 MW, effective energy distribution continues to be a difficulty, even though Angola has an installed capacity to produce 6,200 MW of power per day.
China has taken a keen interest in Angola’s efforts to modernize its economy throughout the last decade. Angolan companies may now sell a variety of items to China’s consumers duty-free after the two countries inked an investment protection agreement in December.
When Bitcoin reached its 840,000th block on April 19, it underwent its fourth halving event in its history. As of this point in time, mining incentives will be half what they were before, at 3.125 BTC per mined block instead of 6.25 BTC.
Approximately every four years, or around 210,000 blocks, the Bitcoin system executes the halving, a predefined procedure.
The goal of this method is to manage the creation of new Bitcoins by reducing the rate of supply over time. This will keep the currency scarce and adapt to the increasing usage and mining capabilities of the network.
Also Read: Nigeria introduces Africa’s first large-scale multilingual language model
