China is reported to be moving to ban bitcoin mining again, maybe.

A questionable report surfaced Monday that claims a previously unknown regulator in China is asking other government authorities to push bitcoin miners out of business. The claim comes from Quartz, which reported that the directive comes from the “Leading Group of Internet Financial Risks Remediation.”

The alleged directive involves a notice asking local governments to “guide” bitcoin-mining operations to make an “orderly exit” from the business. Part of that “guide” is said to include local authorities using measures linked to electricity price, land use, tax and environmental protection, among other things, “to guide bitcoin miners to quit the business.” The memo is also claimed to ask authorities to report information about mining facilities in their regions and efforts to force them out by Jan. 10 then every month thereafter.

A ban on bitcoin mining by China is not beyond the realm of possibility. Reports that it was looking at doing so first arose when the country banned bitcoin exchanges in September.

However, there are several unanswered questions in the report and some doubt as to whether it’s accurate. The first and most obvious flaw is that the “Leading Group of Internet Financial Risks Remediation,” nominated by Quartz as China’s internet finance regulator, is either a new body or doesn’t exist. Until very recently, the National Internet Finance Association of China was the government-authorized body covering the sector.

Previous decisions on bitcoin were actually made by the Central Bank of China, with the bans or restrictions then being applied by provisional bodies, such as the “Shanghai Municipal Financial Service Office.” To be fair, China is a communist country with an insane amount of bureaucracy, but it is strange that the memo has supposedly come from a previously unknown body.

Adding more credence to the idea that the memo may be false is a Jan. 4 report that quoted the People’s Bank of China as denying that it planned to ban bitcoin mining. But the report noted that “top regulators in China are planning to withdraw preferential benefits such as tax deductions and cheap electricity supplies available to bitcoin mining companies,” which may lead into some of the current story.

Whether the report is true or not, the price of bitcoin dropped somewhat Monday, though it’s still trading within the price range it has sat in since Dec. 23. As of 10:55 p.m. EST, bitcoin was trading at $15,270.02.

Photo: Doggage/Wikimedia Commons