As part of its effort to regulate the crypto mining sector, Kazakhstan has shut down 13 cryptocurrency mining operations. The Kazakh Ministry of Energy stated that the miners were using a lot of energy. It had a total power consumption of 202 megawatts. The government said its authorities will continue to identify and terminate mining farms.
The Central Asian country witnessed an influx of crypto miners after China’s crackdown in 2021. As such, Kazakhstan’s power consumption has skyrocketed. It accommodates, as per Cointelegraph data, 18% of the world’s bitcoin hash rate as of August 2021 – second only to the United States.
However, crypto-miners have been trickling out of Kazakhstan because of the unstable power supply. This has prompted the miners to look for countries and jurisdictions which are crypto-friendly and have renewable energy sources and supplies as crypto mining is a highly energy-intensive sector.
Meanwhile, BIT Mining a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency miner has halted its nearly $10 million mining data center construction project in Kazakhstan because of an unstable power supply. It was planning to have a 100 megawatts power capacity. But since Kazakhstan’s national grid operator began to ration electricity to crypto miners and then completely cut them off, the company abandoned its mining rigs in the country. It purchases new hardware and decided to move to the US.
Furthermore, with the government crackdown and crypto miners themselves opting to leave the country, the hash rate is expected to fall further. And Kazakhstan will no longer be in the top three BTC mining countries in the index update – expected to be out next month.
