After a crackdown in China nearly destroyed the crypto activity in the former home of the industry, the United States has emerged as the world’s hotspot for Bitcoin mining.

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According to a Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance report published on Wednesday, America accounted for 35.4 percent of the worldwide hash rate, a measure of computational power used to extract digital currencies, at the end of August. This is more than double the amount of activity witnessed in April.

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The rise in the country’s relative share has been fueled by China’s efforts to limit industry growth in order to minimize financial risk. During the early days of Bitcoin’s 2009 creation, the Asian nation served as the headquarters for the largest miners, who took advantage of inexpensive energy from coal and hydro facilities.

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Beijing’s stepped-up attempts to rein in the crypto industry, announced in May, are beginning to bear fruit. According to Cambridge researchers, China’s observed proportion in Bitcoin mining has effectively reached zero. This is down from as high as 75% in September 2019, when Cambridge began collecting data. It’s also a significant drop from the 46 percent level seen in April of this year.

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There’s a good chance that hidden mining is still going on in China, but it’s being done over virtual private networks that make the computers appear to be in another nation. According to a Cambridge study, recent spikes in hash rate in Ireland and Germany are most likely the consequence of miners utilizing VPNs or proxy servers.

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Miners are looking for cheap electricity and friendly governments to fuel the cryptocurrency boom, which is reaching record highs once again. Bitcoin has increased by more than 380 percent in the last year, and it now trades at approximately $55,100 with a total market value of around $1 trillion.

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The researchers at the institute, which is part of the University of Cambridge’s – Cambridge Judge Business School, collect data on mining operators’ IP addresses from mining pools BTC.com, Poolin, ViaBTC, and Foundry.