Some miners in Kosovo are considering selling their equipment, following a government ban on cryptocurrency mining.
One crypto exchange co-owner based in Kosovo’s capital Pristina told Bloomberg he knew of several miners who were actively trying to sell their equipment. Unlike other places where there’s been a crackdown there have been only “minimal cases” of miners relocating to other countries.
“The mining was done in Kosovo because it was possible to do it illegally,” said exchange co-owner Ardian Alaj. “Moving operations overseas would create additional costs that local miners are not used to.”
Crypto in Kosovo
Due to the country’s relatively cheap cost of energy, young people in Kosovo had flocked to crypto mining in recent years. This had especially been the case in the northern region of Mitrovica, one of the four Serb-majority parts of the country, which exempts its citizens from electricity bills.
However, in the face of high import costs and power plant failures, the government introduced power cuts and declared a 60-day state of emergency late last year. In light of this energy crisis, the government subsequently banned cryptocurrency mining. Since the introduction of the ban, some 429 devices used to mine cryptocurrencies have been confiscated by Kosovo authorities, according to the Gazetta Express newspaper.
The case in Kazakhstan
A similar story has been playing out in Kazakhstan. Cheap energy prices combined with geographical proximity drew enough of the fleeing miners from China to bring Kazakhstan’s proportion of the global hash rate from 8% in April 2021 to 18% in August last year. This elevated it to becoming the world’s second-largest producer of Bitcoin, following the United States.
However, the influx of miners has also strained the power grid of the Central Asian nation, which is also growing impatient with the industry. Internet outages caused by social unrest earlier this month led to a drop in the global hash rate. Although nearly all of these operations have since been restored, some miners are still considering relocating.
