ViaBTC Shuts Down Contract Mining, Chinese Miners Relocating?

In a statement published yesterday, ViaBTC, the popular Chinese-based mining pool announced it will shut down its contract marketplace. It's the part of their business in which customers can "buy" hashpower and get the corresponding rewards. The end is nigh, as customers will have to "terminate their contracts by January 10th". Meaning tomorrow.

Correlating this with the news aired by Bloomberg a few ays ago, in which significant players in the crypto mining business are looking elsewhere, it all checks out. According to that news:

Bitmain, which runs China’s two largest bitcoin-mining collectives, is setting up regional headquarters in Singapore and now has mining operations in the U.S. and Canada, Wu Jihan, the company’s co-founder, said in an interview. BTC.Top, the third-biggest mining pool, is opening a facility in Canada and ViaBTC, ranked No. 4, has operations in Iceland and America, their founders said.

Seems like the glory days of China leading the Bitcoin mining trend are over. Or, to put it in a different light: seems like the days of crypto mining are over, and we may soon see the rise of new minting protocols.

Ethereum is already testing a PoS network for Casper, and STEEM / BitShares are using DPoS for over two years.

Slowly, the world realizes that "crypto" is not necessarily equal "Bitcoin".

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):

• Rewards: Were Does The Money Come From?
• Netiquette: How To Avoid Being A Steem Douche?
• Witnesses: What Are They And Why Should You Care?
• How Can I Mine Steem And What CPU / GPU Power Do I Need For That?
• The Beginner Guide To Not Getting Hacked On Steemit