For the first time, Russia got the second place in cryptocurrency mining

As Kommersant writes, referring to BitRiver data, the USA has 3-4 GW of cryptocurrency mining capacity, Russia has 1 GW. The top 10 mining countries included the Persian Gulf (700 MW), Canada (400 MW), Malaysia (300 MW), Argentina (135 MW), Iceland (120 MW), Paraguay (100-125 MW), Kazakhstan (100 MW) and Ireland (90 MW).

This trend is associated with restrictions on the work of miners in Kazakhstan (licensing of this activity and measures to protect energy from unregulated mining) and the early shortage of electricity in China. BitRiver CEO Igor Runets said that the development in the American market has slowed down due to the rise in electricity prices, a decrease in mining profitability and the abolition of tax benefits. Miners in the States mostly purchased equipment on credit . Now many of them have gone bankrupt. Roman Nekrasov, co—founder of the ENCRY Foundation, clarified that the attention of market participants is focused on the actions of regulators in the United States, because the United States is the leader in total hashrate.

Analysts see the likelihood of another redistribution of the mining market in the United States due to the actions of regulators. A similar situation has already been noted in China. So far, the status of the cryptocurrency has not been determined in the States and the issue of the negative impact on the ecology of PoW mining (the most energy-consuming process used mainly in bitcoin mining) has not been resolved. On the part of Asian regulators, there is a warming in attitude towards the crypto industry.

In mid-March, we recall that the Russian Association of Crypto Industry and Blockchain (RAKIB) appealed to the head of the Ministry of Finance Anton Siluanov with a request to explain the proposal of the department on the introduction of new criminal penalties for miners who evade taxes. Before that, the draft of the Ministry of Finance on punishments for miners was submitted for approval to the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Justice, the Federal Tax Service and the Central Bank. The RAKIB stated that the document proposed by the Ministry of Finance "caused a lot of misunderstandings and questions in the community of entrepreneurs in the field of digital economy".