Russian Miners Extract 54,000 BTC in 2023

In 2023, Russia secured the second position in cryptocurrency mining volumes, trailing only the United States. This was reported by Kommersant, citing data from BitRiver.

According to their calculations, Russian miners extracted approximately 54,000 BTC last year (valued at $3.5 billion at the current rate). The country operated an average of up to 2.2 GW of mining capacity (compared to 1 GW in 2022).

Based on the average capacity of the equipment, BitRiver experts calculated that 1 MW of electricity consumed for mining yields about 27 BTC annually.

The United States mined 143,000 BTC during the same period. Their power usage reached 5.3 GW, up from 3–4 GW in 2022.

BitRiver highly regards the potential of Russian cryptocurrency mining, anticipating a 20–40% growth by the end of 2024. However, they pointed out challenges in the legal formalization of this activity, along with several risks including technical failures, hacker attacks, and the volatility of digital assets.

Earlier, the expert council under the Russian government advocated for the implementation of remote energy consumption checks to combat shadow miners.

Back in late April, a new version of the mining regulation bill was submitted to the Russian State Duma. Among other things, it includes a ban on the organization of cryptocurrency circulation except for experimental modes by the Central Bank and the sale of coins by miners.