The United States' Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe warned of China's growing influence in the crypto-currency universe in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Washington Examiner reported. Ratcliffe, in his letter, says that more than half the world's crypto-currency mining operations take place in China and that China's own Central Bank-backed Digital Currency (CBDCs) would make it tough for US-based companies to compete. The report says that Ratcliffe offered to have senior economic intelligence officials brief the SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. The Examiner also quoted an unnamed senior intelligence official who said that there are serious national security concerns about China’s control over Bitcoin and Ethereum and that China's CBDC and artificial-intelligence measures would cement its dominance in technologies and innovations that are likely to run the world for decades to come. Unlike crypto-currencies which are issued without a central bank backing and are privately held and distributed, a CBDC is a digital currency which holds the same value as fiat currencies issued by a country’s central bank. In August this year, Ripple, one of the largest cryptocurrency companies in the US, wrote that the Chinese government subsides energy costs for crypto-miners and that at least 65% of Bitcoin mining and a large portion of Ethereum mining is controlled by China. "China’s efforts to control the digital asset space is an extension of their multi-decade effort to erode the U.S. Dollar’s position as the global reserve currency. A China controlled system could be a world…
