There is a new surcharge for electricity which powers Bitcoin.  The Surcharge has been introduced by Kazakhstan.

Hence forth, miners in Kazakhstan will be paying more than other electricity consumers if they use the electricity to mine digital coins.  This law has been signed by the president in a way imposing additional fee if users use electricity to mine Bitcoin.

This bill has been voted by the Senate earlier in June and it introduces a new fee of 1 Kazakhstani tenge which is approx. $0.0023 per kilowatt-hour to be used by cryptocurrency miners. The new electricity rate will be imposed beginning Jan 1, 2022.  This is meant to bring people operating in the gray economy out of the shadow.  This surcharge will have a negative impact on the attractiveness of the investment in Bitcoin.

This will also drive away Chinese companies who were looking for new BTC friendly jurisdictions after the ban of mining by Chinese government. Reportedly, Kazakhstan has been considered to be among several other potential mining destinations. Over the past years, the country has been good to crypto mining. This is happening after several events signaling that Chinese miners are relocating to Central Asia.

This is just the beginning, because several countries are starting to fast track cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin.com has published, “Beijing subway has officially launched a new program that allows passengers to pay for rides with the central bank digital currency (CBDC) also known as the digital yuan. The news follows the subway system in East China’s Jiangsu province in the city of Suzhou which also allows digital yuan payments for subway fares.”

So, this can be the beginning of CBDCs beginning to take control of the digital mode of transactions. No wonder if other countries would follow.  However, the thing to be noted is that nations cannot offer their people a highly volatile currency.  Not everyone will be interested in dealing with a highly volatile crypto.

Therefore, for as long as the volatility component is there in cryptocurrencies, those who have interest in speculative modes of investment would want to give a shot to make the extra bucks by risking the volatility.

Many of them believe that crypto or Bitcoin is the future of finance.  The drama of someone shilling and people blindly following is going to continue.  There will be Michael Saylor, Elon Musk, Peter Schiff cooking narratives and there is no denying that the cryptocurrency space is going to be eventful than ever.