Since 2017, electricity consumption for mining in Russia has continued to grow steadily. Possession of almost all types of electricity generation, including nuclear power plants, hydropower facilities, as well as the availability of spare capacity reserves, makes it possible to achieve the maximum efficiency of cryptocurrency mining in the Russian Federation. Such a significant increase in the energy consumption of industrial mining, with the legalization and transparent regulation of this type of activity, will entail significant positive shifts at the macro level: the growth of highly skilled employment, the development of related industries and further digitalization of the economy.
According to calculations by experts from Intelion Data Systems, in 2021, the volume of electricity consumption only for mining Bitcoin (BTC) in Russia amounted to about 1.25 gigawatts. At the same time, it is worth considering the fact that the volume of electricity consumption for mining ETH, LTC and other cryptocurrencies, according to the company's specialists, can additionally be about 40-50% of the volume of electricity consumption for mining BTC. The annual increase in electricity consumption for mining since 2017 has always had a positive trend and recorded an increase of at least 150% per year.
According to various government institutions, the share of electricity consumption in the mining of cryptocurrencies accounts for from 0.64% to 2% of the total in Russia, which is comparable to the share of electricity consumption by the country's agriculture, so the prospects for the development of the crypto market in Russia look very serious and require an early legalization this type of activity.
Dynamics of consumption of BTC mining in the Russian Federation
The share of the Russian Federation from the capacity of the global BTC network, % (at the end of the period)
2017 - 3.00%
2018 - 5.00%
2019 - 6.23%
2020 - 7.16%
2021 - 11.23%
BTC network capacity in Russia, EH/s (at the end of the period)
2017 - 0.4200
2018 - 2,1500
2019 - 5.9400
2020 - 9.7800
2021 - 19.9894
The volume of electricity consumption for BTC mining in the Russian Federation, MW
2017 - 64.05
2018 - 215.01
2019 - 481.73
2020 - 727.63
2021 - 1,245.34
Increase in capacity in relation to the previous period, %
2017 - 0%
2018 - 336%
2019 - 224%
2020 - 151%
2021 - 171%
Today, the largest Russian industrial mining operators account for about 40-45% of the consumption of the total mining volume in the country. At the same time, this indicator increases by an average of 5-7% every year.
“Growing interest in energy-intensive blockchain computing in the context of a significant surplus of energy resources in a number of Russian regions, undoubtedly, opens up new opportunities not only for participants in this market, but also for a significant number of industries and business areas related to this market,” the CEO commented on the situation. Intelion Data Systems: Timofey Semyonov.