Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War in February 2022, Russia, Europe’s ice-hardened half-brother to the East, has been completely walled off from the West. The war and its knock-on effects have made Russia an agent of change, perhaps unwittingly at times, to the post-war global order.

That Russia is at the center of a tectonic shift in geopolitics won’t be surprising to most. But they may be surprised to learn that, in the shadows, Russia has been influential in another area that intersects with finance and politics.

In recent years, Russia has quietly asserted itself as one of the top bitcoin mining hubs in the world. And as we lay out in the following pages, a number of converging geopolitical factors nurtured Russia’s fledgling mining industry, including the U.S.’s new tariff policies, the war in Ukraine, and Western sanctions.

Russia is now one of the most consequential players on the map for Bitcoin mining, but language barriers and Russophobia in the West have made it difficult to source reliable information on the country’s bitcoin mining sector.

Blockspace commissioned this report by veteran Bitcoin and political reporter Anna Baydakova to provide a guidepost for the current state of Russia’s mining industry, including key players, relevant regulations, energy landscape, international business pipelines, and more.

With bitcoin mining out of the spotlight in the U.S. as AI/HPC takes center stage, it’s critical that companies to be aware of mining opportunities outside of the U.S. 

Headlines by Blockspace

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