After China’s hard-hitting anti-crypto regulations which arrived in the last few months, not only crypto exchange operators but even crypto miners have been forced to move out of the country who are now looking for safe havens overseas.

Bitmain, a Chinese crypto-mining giant has been granted permission to further carry out its mining operation in the Western Walla Walla County, in the U.S State of Washington. As reported by the local new publication Union-Bulletin, the decision was made completely in agreement with the three commissioners involved in this decision.

Bitmain’s subsidiary Ant Greek will now be setting a mining infrastructure at the blockchain facility over the 10 acres of land. Moreover, Bitmain will also be given an option to make purchases in the next one year for the additional land.

As per the initially proposed deal, Bitmain had asked for 40 acres of land for leasing which would result in 15-20 full-time jobs. Some changes have been made to this and under the newly constructed offer, the lease will continue until the end of 2018 after which the company will have an option to buy the land. The rent for the land is said to be $4,700 approximately per month.

As the decision was made in a public hearing, many residents have opposed this idea of foreign players coming for crypto-mining operations and using the land’s electricity.

A local resident of the Walla wall county, Robb Lincoln said:

“It extracts electricity and creates wealth for the owner with no trickle down.”

Another community member, Peter Fretheim, criticized digital currencies saying:

“It’s not used in legitimate business. It’s used for two things: transactions you want to hide from the law and speculation.”

On the contrary, one of the Reddit users showed optimism on this move saying: “This is actually really good news because they can lobby the US Govt to be pro-crypto.”