I think it's mostly CCP strategy to control as much cryptospace as possible, be it via exchanges or miners. I believe china is in the game of using any method to undermine the western hegemony in the world. This is not even controversial. I'm even willing to believe that the whole covid-19 crisis is leveraged by them for relative power gains. There's not much evidence for this, but that's what I would do. I think the cryptomining rigs could eventually be claimed by the government to house a large general AI and destroy the crypto market in one swing. If I were the Chinese government I would at least entertain that idea. The fact that people don't care about crypto not being really decentralized makes me believe china would research such ploys. They are growing their power in any domain they can get away with, this is one of them.

- south chinese sea islands

- HK annexation

- pressuring Taiwan and constructing infrastructure towards the island.

- hacking attacks

- tibet (making sure homeland security is maximal)

- the concentration camps with Uyghurs (making sure homeland security is maximal)

- the infrastructural projects in africa to gain access to resources

- the buying of as much european assets (like ports, factories, real estate) as possible.

- the state assisted development of large cyber start-ups/companies (jack ma didn't disappear for nothing)

- the state infiltration of big technology firms like huawei 5g and others.

It seems like a clear picture to me.

One of America's greatest strategical assets is the dollar being the world's reserve currency. It's basically a way to be able to print almost endless amounts of dollars without the punitive danger of inflation. Other countries will buy your excess money to make sure their reserves won't devalue.

If china wants hegemony, they would need to undermine this asset in a subtle way. If bitcoin becomes very mainstream and more stable, then this will become the new reserve currency. With the air of being unbiased. However, china controls many of the levers.

Just my three cents.