Because electricity costs less, Russian crypto miners are buying more ASIC mining rigs.
Despite the erratic price movement of the crypto-asset, a new report from Kommersant revealed that sales of Bitcoin mining machines in the country increased rapidly in the fourth quarter. This trend was supported by a resurgence of demand.
The low cost of electricity and equipment also contributed to the significant increase.
One of Russia’s official distributors of cryptocurrency mining rigs, Chilkoot, saw higher sales in the first two months of Q4 than in all of Q3.
The company’s sales were reported to have increased by 65% in the first nine months alone compared to last year.
Mining prices decreased by almost 20% between August and October, according to Chilkoot’s data. However, prices have not changed over the past month.
In addition, the mining hardware reseller observed a 30% increase in one-time equipment purchases compared to the beginning of the year.
Vladislav Antonov, a financial analyst at BitRiver, believes that the price of ASIC mining rigs is a good starting point for investing because it is close to the cost of production.
The price of Bitcoin is currently hovering close to two-year lows, despite a fairly confident start, and the hash rate is still hovering around 240 million Th/s.
However, in recent years, the minting of the cryptoasset has resulted in multifold increases in Russian revenues.
Didar Bekbauov, the co-founder of Xive, also noted this, stating, “Hashrate growth came from Russia.”In some regions, cheap electricity for homes and businesses, cheap ASIC prices, sanctions, fewer investment opportunities, and people with high tech skills made bitcoin mining a very appealing industry in Russia.
The most recent development comes just a few months after the Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation (MiFin) came to an agreement to allow crypto mining in areas with a lot of energy but to ban it in areas with little energy.
Recently, a bill in Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of parliament, was introduced to legalize crypto mining and the sale of mined crypto assets.
