Russian crypto advocates for the RACIB consortium aim to lure Chinese mining companies to the north.
Due to the developments of the last few weeks, China has mutated into a hot spot for Bitcoin miners. An initiative has now been launched in Russia to attract crypto miners. The Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain (short: RACIB) announced their endeavorsaiming to move global computing resources for crypto mining to the Russian Federation.
The announcement mentioned several points that certify Russia’s particularly favorable characteristics for miners. This includes, among other things, the large electricity surplus in the Russian Federation. Depending on the region and generation plant (according to RACIB, also taking into account the high level of wear and tear on the power plant systems and the power redundancy), this can amount to more than 50 percent of the installed electrical power. The cold climate in many Russian regions is also considered beneficial for miners. Because it makes it possible to organize the device cooling without the use of special cooling units, which benefits energy efficiency.
RACIB also wants to run an ecological mining project
Speaking of energy: Recently, crypto mining has been criticized again and again for its poor CO2 balance. The most prominent example of this is certainly Elon Musk. But the RACIB also has an answer to this criticism. Accordingly, one of the RACIB working groups is developing an eco-project for the construction of mining operations. Their supply is to come from “green” electricity from power plants based on renewable energies. In addition to water and nuclear energy, which make up around 40 percent of the country’s total energy balance, new sources of electricity are also being considered, for example based on wind generation.
In order to promote and implement the project, RACIB works closely with Russian government agencies and state-owned companies. The aim is to set up a number of joint working groups with local government structures. There is already a cooperation with some foreign partners. These include a consortium of some of the largest crypto mining companies in China. The announcement states that the companies in this consortium control “more than 25 percent of the global hashrate of major cryptocurrencies”.
Russia is not the only country that offers Chinese miners its energy capacity in order to be a major player in the industry. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez publicly invited Chinese crypto mining companies to consider setting up data centers in his city in June after the Beijing government called for mining farms to shut down.