Crypto miners leaving Kazakhstan

It looks like Kazakhstan is about to lose its second place among the world’s biggest hashrate producers.

After China banned crypto mining and the miners fled to crypto-friendlier countries with excess energy, Kazakhstan’s share in the global Bitcoin hashrate soared from 8% in April to 18% in August. The country has several big coal plants and cheap electricity, which together with its proximity to China have attracted its miners in search of new home.

It appears, however, that the excess energy was not as plentiful as the miners thought. In July Kazakhstan’s biggest city Almaty suffered a blackout, as its electricity grid went under additional pressure due to the heat wave. In October several coal plants suffered outages, adding to the power shortages problems.

The country’s energy minister blamed crypto mining and called to limit crypto mining farms’ power use to 1MW , and the overall power use of all crypto miners – to 100MW.

The strength of crypto mining is in its mobility, and some of the Kazakh miners, such as Xive and BitFuFu are already considering moving. They have shut their operations in Kazakhstan and are exploring new possibilities, with BitFuFu setting their eyes on the US, now world’s biggest hashrate producer thanks to its abundant energy sources and comprehensive laws in states like Texas.

Overall miners leaving Kazakhstan might be a good thing, as they now have a possibility to choose a renewable source of energy  (which are often producing huge surpluses, but lack the infrastructure/capacity to transfer it) in another country.