Russia is quickly catching up with the US in cryptocurrency mining and payments, which is causing serious concern in Western countries, Bloomberg writes.
According to Bloomberg, the volume of bitcoins mined in Russia will reach $3.5 billion in 2023. This has brought the country very close to the US’s leading position in this industry.
Vitaliy Borschenko, co-founder of rival miner BitCluster, was more circumspect about the new regulation than Runets. While it may allow Russia to become the biggest crypto-miner in the world, surpassing the US, there are a lot of challenges that will need to be worked out, such as cheap financing for the purchase of mining equipment and how the new regulations will be implemented, he said.
Igor Runets, whose company is the nation’s biggest data-center provider for crypto mining by revenue, according to estimates from Russia’s RBC newswire, is set to be one of the top beneficiaries given the scale of his business. According to the media group’s estimates, BitRiver’s revenue increased by almost 60% last year.
In 2017, Runets, who holds an MBA from Stanford University, founded BitRiver, building a cryptocurrency mining data center in Siberia. Cold winters and cheap electricity helped the business grow, the publication noted.
