Kazakhstan continues to tighten the screws in the fight against mining

BIT Mining has stopped building a data center in the country amid actions by the authorities

21.02.2022 - 10:40

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What’s new? As part of the inspections, the law enforcement authorities of Kazakhstan detected and stopped the activities of 13 illegal mining farms. They were discovered in Karaganda, Pavlodar, Turkestan, Akmola, and Kostanai regions, as well as in Nur-Sultan, Almaty, and Shymkent, the country’s Ministry of Energy reports. The ministry stressed that the mobile group will continue its work to identify and disable the mining farms.

Press release on the website of the Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan

How do companies operating in the country react to this? BIT Mining, the owner of the BTC.com mining pool, stopped the building of a data center in the country amid actions taken by the Kazakh government. Its decision was affected by the implementation of power supply restrictions, as well as further plans to raise tariffs and taxes on mining equipment. This is stated in the company’s disclosure on the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) website.

BIT Mining’s disclosure on the SEC website

The company noted that the cryptocurrency mining equipment previously deployed at other data centers in Kazakhstan will continue to operate.

What had happened before? In early February, Kazakhstan’s First Vice Minister of Finance, Marat Sultangaziyev, proposed to increase the price of electricity by three times, from $0,0023 per kWh to $0,01. He also proposed to impose a tax on each individual video card (GPU), comparing them to gambling tables in casinos.

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