Inner Mongolia wants general public to snitch on crypto mining operations

In its latest effort to drive out local crypto mining operations, the Inner Mongolia government has set up a platform asking the general public to reveal their whereabouts.

The Inner Mongolia Development and Reform Commission (DRC) said in an announcement on Tuesday that it has set up a dedicated hotline, email and mail address for local people to inform the government if they know of any crypto mining operations that are still active in the region.

The scope of the platform also targets any local crypto mining operation that is enjoying tax, land and power perks under the disguise of a data center or any company that offers land rental services for crypto mining operations.

The measure follows a March announcement by the Inner Mongolia DRC where the government agency sought to shut down crypto miners in the region that mainly use fossil fuels.

Since then, crypto mining companies in the area have been gradually shifting their operations elsewhere in the country. But Inner Mongolia is one of China's largest provinces by land size at 1.183 million square kilometers, 1.6 times that of Texas.

The effort to curb crypto miners is part of Inner Mongolia's bigger plan to meet the carbon emission metrics in the next five years set by the National DRC (NDRC), a central government agency that's in charge of China's macro economic plan. 

The NDRC, one of the 26 cabinet ministers of the central government, has outlined various measures of success for each of the country’s five-year macroeconomic plans. One of the goals for the 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) was to reduce national energy consumption per GDP by 15% compared to the previous five-year period.

This was as much an overall national goal as a local one. But Inner Mongolia was the only province that failed to achieve this as of the end of 2019 — and, based on a government review, the first half of 2020 was even worse.