Chinese miners provoke power outages in Kazakhstan

In the first half of 2021, the Chinese authorities began to fight against cryptocurrency mining in the Middle Kingdom. Due to the adoption of a number of laws restricting the mining of coins, many miners went to other countries. In particular, to Kazakhstan, where they caused power outages.

What is known

Since the summer, Chinese miners have successfully transported almost 90,000 digital currency mining rigs to Kazakhstan. The reason was the low price of electricity - 20 tenge ($ 0.045) per kilowatt-hour. According to experts, because of them, the demand for electricity increased by 8% during the year, while the expected 2%. The load on the power grid reaches 1200 MW.

The Kazakh authorities blame the so-called "gray miners" for everything. Unregistered crypto-seekers will be forced to pay a compensation fee, which will amount to 1 tenge ($ 0.0023) for each kilowatt-hour of electricity. The new rules will take effect from the beginning of 2022.

Due to the crisis, officially registered companies that are engaged in the extraction of cryptocurrency will also get it. There are 50 of them in the country. They will be supplied with metered electricity. In addition, companies were warned that in the event of network failures, they would be turned off first.

The lack of electricity in Kazakhstan will be compensated for by imports. Note that after the migration of Chinese miners, Kazakhstan became the second country in the world to mine the digital currency Bitcoin. The United States is in the lead, and the Russian Federation closes the top three.

A source: Financial Times