As Kazakhstan Descends Into Chaos, Crypto Miners Are at a Loss | WIRED

[jim bell]

https://www.wired.com/story/kazakhstan-cryptocurrency-mining-unrest-energy/

"When Denis Rusinovich set up cryptocurrency mining company Maveric Group in Kazakhstan in 2017, he thought he had hit the jackpot. Next door to China and Russia, the country had everything a Bitcoin miner could ask for: a cold climate, legions of old warehouses and factories where the mining rigs could be installed, and—especially—dirt cheap energy to power the electricity-guzzling process through which cryptocurrency is minted.

“That was a good opportunity,” Rusinovich says. When China outlawed cryptocurrency mining overnight last June, many miners based in the country—which at the time made up between 60 and 70 percent of Bitcoin’s mining network—made the same call and hastily relocated to Kazakhstan, bringing to the country as many as 87,849 mining machines, according to a Financial Times estimate. Less than a year later, the initial buzz is history: Miners are now being confronted with frozen machines, popular unrest, and Russian troops roaming across the country. And leaving is not an option.
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