Chinese Bitcoin Miners Find a New Crypto Haven in Ethiopia

Last spring, cargo containers began appearing near electricity substations connected to the recently built Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africa’s largest. Inside were stacks of powerful, energy-guzzling computers.

It was a telltale sign that Chinese Bitcoin miners, having bounced from country to country in search of cheap power and benign regulations since Beijing cast them out two years before, had arrived in the Horn of Africa.

Buffeted by political and economic headwinds, they were lured by some of the world’s lowest electricity costs — as well as an increasingly friendly government. Ethiopia, which allowed Bitcoin mining starting in 2022 even ...