Crypto Miners Account for Over 2% of Electricity Consumption in Russia, Estimate Suggests – Mining Bitcoin News

The share of crypto miners in Russia’s power consumption structure already exceeds 2%, according to a new government estimate. On this backdrop, the country’s industry ministry believes it’s time to bring the sector out of the shadows and regulate it.

Crypto Miners Burn More Electricity Than Russian Farmers

Miners extracting digital currencies account for more than 2% of the total volume of electricity consumed in the Russian Federation and their activities need to be “whitewashed” and regulated, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Vasily Shpak stated. Speaking at a forum organized by the ruling United Russia party, Shpak elaborated:

This is more than the cost of electricity for agriculture. In this sense, we cannot but recognize mining as an industry.

Cryptocurrency mining is now in the “gray zone,” it’s not taxed in any way and creates risks for those involved in it, the government official noted during the event devoted to the development of blockchain technologies and the regulation of digital financial assets. Shpak is convinced that the industry can be brought out of the shadows and made transparent for the state.

The deputy minister expects that in the future the amount of electricity spent on mining will decrease as the industry moves towards less energy-intensive mining protocols. Nevertheless, it’s obvious that mining facilities will continue to consume power, Shpak said, quoted by Interfax. He further emphasized:

Our position is completely unambiguous — mining must be recognized, regulated and established as an industrial activity.

Bitcoin mining is one of the key crypto-related activities that Russian authorities are now working to legalize, despite Bank of Russia’s call for a blanket ban on all of them. A bill designed to achieve that was filed with the Russian parliament in late April. The draft legislation was recently revised and lawmakers withdrew a proposal to introduce a one-year tax and customs amnesty for mining entities.

Officials in Moscow believe Russia should develop the sector, citing its competitive advantages in terms of abundant energy resources and favorable climate. However, amid western penalties imposed over the invasion of Ukraine, Russian miners have been targeted with sanctions to deny the country opportunities to circumvent the restrictions. Russia’s share in the average global monthly hashrate has dropped to 4.66% this year.

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bill, Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining, consumption, Crypto, crypto miners, crypto mining, Cryptocurrencies, Cryptocurrency, draft law, Electricity, Energy, Hashrate, Legislation, Miners, mining, power, Regulation, Regulations, Russia, russian, shareDo you think the electricity consumption in Russia’s crypto mining sector will continue to grow after the industry is regulated? Share your expectations in the comments section below.

Lubomir Tassev

Lubomir Tassev is a journalist from tech-savvy Eastern Europe who likes Hitchens’s quote: “Being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do.” Besides crypto, blockchain and fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.

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In an event of a crisis…

Imagine, your president/emperor/leader finally caved in and a sudden political chaos happened. Your local currency is getting worthless every minute. You as a part of a minority somehow got targeted because the mob needs to channel their anger. You’re a regular joe who don’t have access to foreign assets.

Anyway, you’re trying to get out of the country, and may not return. Where you’re going, you need money. The bank? Banks are closing and lines are miles long due to a bank run. Foreign currency supply is being blocked off by your government as a stop gap measure to keep the local currency from crapping itself even more. Gold? At a scale is pretty impractical to carry as a refugee.

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin IMO the most practical to move in an event like this. You can just keep your wallet phrase and just get away, regardless of who you are and where you’re from. And the most important thing is how the currency is independent of any political group which makes any form of CBDC objectively worse (in an event where your president is the “bad guy” according to the WEF, you’ll still have a rough time.)

The Bitcoin network difficulty has dropped 4.3 percent to 29.897T, the lowest level in ten months.

The network difficulty recorded a drop of 4.33% — falling from 31.251 trillion to 29.897 trillion on May 26, just two weeks after attaining its all-time high. The Bitcoin network witnessed a historic event on May 12 when the network difficulty attained its all-time high of 31.251 trillion as miners mined nearly 50,000 BTC of the remaining 2 million tokens.

To authenticate and confirm transactions on the BTC blockchain, increased network difficulty necessitates more processing power. As a result, bad actors are unable to take control of the network by providing more than 50% of the hash rate and committing double-spending assaults. According to Gonzalez, El Salvador made profits via strategic BTC investments and repurposed the fresh funds to build infrastructures like a veterinary hospital and a public school. Is now the time to dive into BTC, or look at a different direction and look at some projects like CoinFantasy? The choice is yours!

I call bottom ( $1700 )

I usually only restrict myself to posting in the daily discussion.

But since these events are pretty rare, it's still worthy of their separate posts.

I'm calling bottom at $1700

You can't go much wrong with any buys in the range of $1700 - $1800 right now.

We are entering our 9th red candle week. That's a record.

On something that is bullish AF on the long term.

I mean, get this: ETH is going $10k, $20k

Bitcoin is going to hit $100k somewhere in the future, that has become almost a law.

And when Bitcoin hits $100k and beyond, the road lies far wide open for ETH to reach $10k

That's the big picture, that's the long term chart.

A 9-week streak of red candles is really, really, pushing the limits of the bears in this huge bull run we've been in since 2015. The bears are running out of ammo.

Honestly, what more does anyone in here expect from this short bear market within the bull market... $1300 ? $1000 ?

There is not a single metric supporting such a price.

Be happy with the discount that you can get, it's not going to get any better than this.

The Ramifications Couldn't have Been Greater for Ethereum's Merger. What do you think of the Upcoming merger?

Crypto investors are looking forward to the end of May, a month that has brought nothing but losses. And, while it's too soon to say whether the worst is over—Bitcoin is currently trading below $30,000 as this has taken its toll on Altcoins including relatively new ones like Solana which is one of the largest transaction network; Concordium which is a fast and cheap transaction network e.t.c and could fall further—it appears that the industry will weather the storm just fine. So long as the Ethereum merger goes smoothly.

If you've been living under a crypto rock, "The Merge" refers to the long-awaited upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain, which will see the No. 2 cryptocurrency switch to a proof-of-stake model, removing concerns about Ethereum's environmental impact and dramatically improving transaction speed.

The Merge is the most recent name (the previous one was Ethereum 2.0) for a process that has been ongoing for years and has been postponed numerous times. However, Ethereum experts, including co-founder Vitalik Buterin, are now predicting that the event will take place in August when the Beacon chain (a parallel Ethereum blockchain that is serving as a proof-of-stake test) merges with the main Ethereum chain.

They had better be correct. Crypto desperately needs a win right now, and Ethereum pulling off the most significant upgrade in blockchain history would provide it. It would show that the Ethereum community, which is known for being friendly but frivolous, is capable of doing serious business.

It could also spark a significant ETH price increase.

While Ethereum's chances of completing the merger appear promising, there are also reasons to be concerned. The Beacon chain experienced a so-called "block reorganization" event this week, in which its blockchain forked for seven consecutive blocks—something that hasn't happened in years. While the cause appears to be benign, it triggered a brief period of uncertainty because the emergence of multiple, competing Ethereum chains following the merger would be disastrous.

To their credit, the elite developers assisting in the merger have worked patiently and methodically to ensure that the new Ethereum blockchain is ready for prime time. And, as Kraken CEO Jesse Powell stated on a recent episode of Decrypt's gm podcast, he is unconcerned about the numerous delays that have plagued the merger process, because success is more important than speed in a situation of this magnitude.

Powell is correct, but the Ethereum merger cannot continue for much longer. Further delays will elicit accusations that the Ethereum community is unprepared for the task, and it is possible that the blockchain's gas fee woes, which are a major impediment to crypto's mainstream adoption, will never be resolved. Failure by Ethereum to move beyond the energy-intensive proof-of-work system would provide additional ammunition to environmentalists and politicians who already have a grudge against the crypto industry.

The bottom line is that the stakes for the merger could not be higher, not just for Ethereum, but for the entire crypto industry. Success will restore faith in Web3, whereas further delays or a botched execution will result in a price collapse and a new and nasty Crypto Winter. Everyone in the crypto community, including Bitcoin maxis, should be rooting for Ethereum to pull this off. The alternative is a market much worse than the one we're in right now.

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Since Bitcoin is a P2P currency with many stakeholders, it is important to collect requirements as broadly as possible, and through the process enhance everyone’s understanding of the technical properties of Bitcoin to help foster an inclusive, transparent, and informed process.

In order to facilitate wider audience participation, Scaling Bitcoin events are live-streamed with remote participation possible via IRC and WeChat for parallel online discussions and the ability to participate in live Q&A.

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• Engineers (related areas of expertise)
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Hacker tastes own medicine as community gets back stolen NFTs

The dev partner of the Solana-based NFT game raised the royalty to 98% from the usual 5%, resulting in the scammer listing the 25 stolen NFTs for sale, which were then bought back and returned.

Tales of traders getting scammed out of their nonfungible tokens were quite common at the peak of the NFT boom. However, in an interesting turn of events, the Solana community came together to “scam” a scammer in order to get back some stolen NFTs.

It all started with the Discord channel hack of cross-chain gaming development studio Uncharted NFT, where scammers managed to drain 109 user wallets. The scammers got away with 150-plus SOL tokens and 25 World of Solana (WOS) NFTs, including three rare and highly valuable digital collectibles.

WOS is a collection of 2,222 unique heroines, with the most expensive avatar currently listed for 123 SOL ($5,600). The current floor price of the collection is 2.03 SOL.

In the aftermath of the hack, the community decided to get back the stolen NFTs. The WOS team got in touch with their development partner, who goes by Cyberfrog on Twitter, and raised royalties on the stolen NFTs to 98% from the default 5%.

#nft #crypto #metaverse #blockchain #nonfungible #gamefi #metafi #defi #bitcoin #playtoearn