An unknown person in Russia has been seen stacking 20,000 Bitcoin mining machines at one of the BitRiver’s locations in Siberia
Russia has reportedly facilitated the import of thousands of Bitcoin mining devices during the massive surge in the crypto sector. A senior executive at BitRiver, currently the largest crypto mining colocation service provider in Russia, claimed that a local client ordered and received over 20,000 crypto mining devices.
CEO and founder of BitRiver, Igor Runts, stated that the total mining power of the aforementioned hardware amounts to around 70 MWh, which is reportedly the largest single batch of crypto mining hardware in all of Russia.
Runets also said that the hardware was delivered in December 2020, and was set up for Bitcoin mining. The location of this enormous mining facility is in Bratsk — a city in Russia with one of the country’s largest hydropower stations.
Runets noted that the order came from Asia, but that BitRiver cannot and will not disclose the names of either the Russian client or the exact country that exported this hardware. However, the representative did state that the mining center was established at one of BitRiver’s facilities.
BitRiver also did not disclose the exact type of cryptocurrency miners imported. However, Kommersant stated that the imported batch was priced somewhere between $40 and $60 million.
Despite Russia creating and adopting the “Digital Financial Assets” law in January 2021, there is still a certain level of uncertainty about cryptocurrency mining in the country as the law currently does not provide a clear regulatory framework.