Finance News
By Bruce Buterin
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What 1 Gigawatt Actually Means. One gigawatt is not a small number. To put it in rough terms, that's the kind of output you'd…
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Miners Left Without a Roadmap. The energy ministry hasn't laid out how it plans to enforce the ban.
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Russia's Broader Energy Calculation. It's worth stepping back and looking at what the Russian government seems to be doing here.
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Russia just shut it down. The Moscow region has banned all crypto mining activity, effective immediately, and the freeze runs until 2032 — a nearly decade-long halt that hits one…
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The trigger was power. Energy officials in the region had been watching electricity consumption from mining operations creep toward roughly 1 gigawatt — that's a massive draw on…
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One gigawatt is not a small number. To put it in rough terms, that's the kind of output you'd expect from a mid-sized power plant running at full capacity.
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The decree doesn't mess around with half-measures. It's a full stop, not a slowdown. Mining operations in the region must cease.
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And that "figure out the rest later" part is where things get murky.
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The energy ministry hasn't laid out how it plans to enforce the ban. No specific penalties for violations have been announced. No monitoring mechanism has been described publicly.
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Relocation is the obvious option for larger operations. Russia has other regions — Siberia, for instance — where electricity is cheaper and colder temperatures help with cooling…
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See also: Tillis and Gallego Send White House a Crypto Ethics Fix to Unlock 60 Votes
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There's also no word on compensation. The decree, from what's been made public, doesn't include any provision for businesses that now face sudden shutdown.
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That's a hard landing for an industry that had been growing fast. Crypto mining has expanded sharply across Russia over the past several years, with the country becoming one of…
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It's worth stepping back and looking at what the Russian government seems to be doing here. The Moscow region ban isn't happening in a vacuum.
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Officials have been pretty clear that energy security is the priority. And a 1 GW draw from one sector, in one region, is apparently past the threshold they're willing to tolerate.
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