Kazakhstan sets national limit for energy cryptocurrency mining can use

Kazakhstan's Ministry of Energy, seeking to avoid power outages, tells the country's electric grid operator to limit digital mining operations to 1 MW capacity for a period of two years. "At the same time, the total power for electrical installations of consumers engaged in digital mining activities should not exceed 100 (one hundred) megawatts in the Republic of Kazakhstan," the ministry said in a document posted on its website. The country now stands as the second-biggest producer of bitcoin (BTC-USD) accounting for ~18% of the global hash rate, only trailing the U.S., according to Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, after China cracked down on crypto mining earlier this year. Earlier this month, BIT Mining (BTCM -3.5%) reported boosting its investment in its Ohio crypto mining center and said it would limit power capacity at its Kazakhstan crypto mining data center to 40MW, still far above the the ministry's new limit. In