Russia's Buryatia and Transbaikal to wind down crypto mining ban this month

Crypto mining operations are set to resume in two Russian regions with seasonal restrictions on the activity that may eventually become permanent.

The positive development, at this point, comes amid growing uncertainty for Russia’s coin minting industry that recently saw its top player, Bitriver, getting into trouble over debt and taxes.

Buryatia and Transbaikal to permit cryptocurrency mining in March

The authorities in the Republic of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai, both located in Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District, will allow crypto mining facilities to power up their hardware in the coming weeks.

Temporary restrictions imposed on November 15 to address energy shortages during the fall-winter period expire on March 15, the RIA Novosti news agency highlighted in a report quoting official documents.

According to a government decree, the seasonal ban affected almost the entire territory of Buryatia, covering 19 municipal districts and the Ulan-Ude urban district.

In Transbaikal, the measure concerned 14 municipal districts, the urban district of Chita, the village of Aginskoye, and the closed administrative-territorial entity of Gorny.

Regional and federal regulators have already prohibited the minting of digital currencies in another 10 Russian territories, spanning from Russia’s Far East to occupied Eastern Ukraine.

Citing power deficits, Russian officials completely banned cryptocurrency mining in the southern parts of Irkutsk Oblast, with which Buryatia and Transbaikal share a common distribution network.

The profitable business has also been halted in the Caucasian republics of Dagestan, North Ossetia–Alania, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia.

Mining is permanently prohibited in the occupied parts of the Ukrainian Oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. In all these cases, the restrictions will remain in place until March 15, 2031.

Siberian regions still under threat of full mining ban

The positive news of the lifting of the mining restrictions in Buryatia and Transbaikal comes after media reports revealed that the executive power in Moscow intends to impose a blanket ban on mining in the two Siberian regions for the next five years.

The plan to introduce a year-round prohibition was first discussed at a meeting of the commission on the development of the electric power industry in June, when the decision was postponed.

In October, Nikolai Shulginov, who heads the Energy Committee at the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament, told RIA he supports such a move.

In mid-December, the business daily Kommersant wrote that this is likely to happen in 2026, quoting a draft protocol for an upcoming meeting of the same government commission.

Restrictions create significant insecurity for Russian miners

Due to its energy riches and cool climatic conditions, Russia became a major player in the global crypto mining industry in the past few years.

However, the geographical concentration of its energy resources in certain areas as well as subsidized electricity rates have led to mining enterprises clustering in some parts of the country.

Mining became the first legalized and properly regulated crypto activity in Russia in 2024, but less than a third of all crypto businesses have since come out of the shadows and applied for official registration.

Both registered and “gray” miners have been blamed for growing energy shortages, and the authorities have been going after illegal mining facilities running on stolen power.

Despite the ongoing crackdown on criminal activities in the space, the total number of crypto farms jumped by 44% last year, to nearly 200,000, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

At the same time, the expanding and constantly changing restrictions, which mostly affect legal mining businesses, are making it harder for companies to plan their investments, costs and revenues.

Last month, the Federal Tax Service (FNS) filed a bankruptcy petition against an entity from the crypto mining group BitRiver, Russia’s largest miner by revenue and capacity.

The BitRiver-B subsidiary was behind a multimillion-dollar project to construct a 100 MW mining data center in Buryatia, which was finalized but never launched.

It’s believed the failed investment was a key factor contributing for the company’s growing debt. Its founder Igor Runets was detained in January and accused of tax evasion.

Runets was placed under house arrest amid employee departures due to unpaid salaries and mounting lawsuits filed by BitRiver’s contractors and energy suppliers.

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