Chinas central bank told a top-level government internet finance group that the monetary authority can tell local governments to regulate the power usage of bitcoin miners to gradually reduce the scale of their production, a source said.
Rather good news. "Gradually" is the key word, they don't intend to force miners to shut down immediately, just to cap their power usage over time.
That would be a shift in mining power, China will be gradually losing its % of hashpower, which is probably a good thing.
I completely don't understand the decision of Chinese government, by having majority of BTC hashpower on their territory - they have some sort of control over BTC (they could take over and attack BTC if it ever become a threat to them). Are they really that concerned that power consumption can get out of hand and cause shortage?
That would be really a great news for bitcoin world since chinese miners would no more be able to influence decisions which should be taken by core team.
It has already been discussed that china would not go against bitcoin mining since its a revenue for their country as mined bitcoins are sold to the whole world.They have already took strict actions against exchanges.And now,the decision comes against miners.
Bitcoin world would definitely face network congestion since majority of bitcoins are mined till now from china.But step by step,it would get clear as big companies start to shift their farms from china and set up it in other friendly countries whether cheap electricity is available.