I was thinking that or it's a signal to the chinese people to cash out now. Transfer that wealth into China while the getting is good
the chinese people are trying to get their money out of china. they have less faith in the govt than anyone.
right now there is no reliable storage of wealth in china. with the government dictating everything (money, investments, policy) anything you have can easily become worthless.
extended family members in china are pooling money to buy 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th houses in order to make the eldest sons look like a promising marriage prospect because of the fallout of the one child policy reducing the number of females born decades earlier. men outnumber women by wide margins in the rural areas. there is a housing bubble in china and everyone is waiting for it to burst.
the current means of wealth storage is land/housing. because of the way smaller districts (US equivalent would be counties/states) are making up for shortfalls in budgets, there is a ton of borrowing based on land. but central government policy can mandate any kind of change that could result in an area being turned into some project development zone. residents could be forced to sell (not necessarily at a profit) and all their saving was for naught.
the newly wealthy are now looking for ways to get their money out of china. the laws limit citizens from taking out more than $50,000 worth of rmb/yuan in a year outside of china and spending it on land or other long term investments. the number of citizens skirting the law has forced the government to hire western law enforcement veterans to track down and recover the money.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02...-reclaim-money-from-inside-australia/10806228
mining bitcoin and eth are effectively the best way to get money out china with no bank record trail. all you need is the wallet key, just take a vacation to some nation without strong ties to china and looser bank regulation/reporting and access the wallet on some local exchange to convert your crypto to cash. there is no way for china to know.
that's why even if china cracks down on domestic exchanges their citizens will keep mining.