The president of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has passed a new bill that will require crypto miners to pay an additional energy fee.
As China’s government is shutting down mining facilities throughout its territory, these companies are moving their equipment out of the country. Kazakhstan has already been selected from the majority of these firms to relocate their activity.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev introduced an additional fee of 1 Kazakhstan tenge ($0.00233) per kilowatt-hour utilized by virtual currency miners. The law was approved last month and will, and it will take effect in January 2022.
One of the mining companies that shipped its equipment to Kazakhstan is BIT Mining Limited. The firm transferred its first load, which consisted of 320 machines with a hypothetical maximum total hash rate capacity of 18.2 PH/s in the country.
“We are committed to protecting the environment and lowering our carbon footprint. We have been strategically expanding our operations overseas as part of our growth strategy. Following our investments in cryptocurrency mining data centers in Texas and Kazakhstan, we are accelerating our overseas development for alternative high-quality mining resources. We believe our vision and early-mover advantage will enable us to be agile in responding to the globally evolving regulatory environment, which will ultimately contribute to our long-term growth.”
Mr. Xianfeng Yang, CEO of BIT Mining
BIT Mining wasn’t the only company to deliver elsewhere its mining machines last month. A logistic firm in China confirmed it airlifted 3 tons of bitcoin mining devices to Maryland. Eunice Yoon, a CNBC correspondent in Beijing, posted a picture of the packed-up machines on Twitter.
