Cointime

Download App
iOS & Android

Demand for Cryptocurrency Miners Rises in Russia Amid Low Prices of Hardware

Cointime Official

Russia’s market for specialized crypto mining equipment has been seeing high demand over the past couple of months, with buyers attracted by the low price tags. Russian experts also predict an increase in the supply of used coin minting hardware as large foreign companies leave the industry.

Russian Demand for Powerful ASIC Miners Skyrockets in Q4, Report Reveals

Demand for powerful computing devices designed to mint bitcoin has surged in Russia during the fourth quarter of the year, spurred by their low prices amid declining crypto markets, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported. The country’s cheap electricity rates and expectations for a higher supply of second-hand miners have played a role as well.

The positive trend in the market for ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) miners, used to extract bitcoin, has been observed despite a recent decrease in demand for graphics processing units (GPUs), or video cards employed to validate transactions for other cryptocurrencies, experts from the industry told the newspaper.

The sales of mining hardware retailer Chilkoot in the first two months of Q4 exceeded those for the entire third quarter. And the total for the previous nine months of 2022 was 65% higher than last year’s volume. The daily also quoted Bitriver, one of Russia’s largest mining operators, which said that in the first 10 months of this year the demand for miners grew by 1.5 times.

“We work with legal entities and they began to buy 30% more equipment per transaction than at the beginning of the year,” noted Artem Eremin, Chilkoot’s development manager. He added that the prices of GPUs started falling in the second half of September and are still declining, citing Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake mining as a major reason.

If before The Merge video cards were bought by miners in huge quantities, now demand comes mostly from gamers, acknowledged Roman Kaufman, co-founder of Berezka DAO and Weezi. The crypto entrepreneur confirmed that ASICs are now gaining “huge popularity” in the Russian Federation.

Depressed Prices of New and Used Equipment to Benefit Big Mining Companies in Russia

Industrial mining enterprises in Russia can take advantage of the current market conditions, said Bitriver’s Financial Analyst Vladislav Antonov, who also pointed out that the increase in demand is due to decrease in wholesale prices. The cost of mining hardware decreased by almost 20% between August and October, he revealed.

Russia’s relatively low electricity rates, compared to many other regions in the world, is another factor supporting demand for crypto miners, according to Terracrypto’s founder Nikita Vassev.

Despite the low valuations in the crypto market, with bitcoin (BTC) hovering in the range of $16,000 – $17,000, Russian mining firms still have some margin of safety, noted 51ASIC co-founder Mikhail Brezhnev. When using the latest models of coin minting machines to mine at just $0.07 per 1 kWh, the production cost of 1 bitcoin is around $11,000.

The picture could improve further for crypto mining businesses in Russia due to the expected influx of used mining equipment. As Brezhnev explained, many mining companies, mainly foreign-based and financed by borrowed capital or clients, have failed to optimize their activities and may go out of business amid the current bear market. He believes their mining machines will most likely be bought in bulk by others who want to enter the industry.

The comments of the experts interviewed by Kommersant come after earlier reports revealed a significant growth in revenue and electricity consumption in Russia’s mining sector over a period of several years. However, this year’s crypto winter and sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine hurt crypto miners in Russia and some foreign investors have already pulled out of the country.

Comments

All Comments

Recommended for you

  • Bitcoin Layer 2 Project Bitlayer Launches $50 Million Ecosystem Incentive Program

    Bitlayer, a Bitcoin Layer2 infrastructure project based on the BitVM paradigm, announced the launch of a $50 million ecological incentive plan to promote the development of its mainnet ecosystem. The first phase of the incentive program, named "Ready Player One," will begin registration at 09:00 UTC on March 29th, 2024 and end at 09:00 UTC on April 29th, 2024, and will officially start after the Bitlayer mainnet is launched. Specific rules and reward allocation guidelines for the event will be disclosed in subsequent announcements. Through the "Ready Player One" and other ecological incentive plans, Bitlayer aims to accelerate ecosystem development and incentivize projects to deploy on the Bitlayer mainnet. In addition, Bitlayer promises comprehensive ecosystem support for all projects, including potential foundation and institutional investment, initial liquidity support, comprehensive product development resources, guidance and investment opportunities from top incubators, support from the Bitcoin community and OGs, ecosystem cooperation, and co-creation.

  • Stablecoin protocol Ethena on BNBChain has been hacked

    The stablecoin protocol Ethena on BNBChain has been hacked, causing a loss of 480 BNB, worth about $290,000, as monitored by PeckShieldAlert.

  • Singapore-based Bitcoin Layer2 Project BEVM Raises Tens of Millions in Seed and Series A Funding

    Singapore-based Bitcoin Layer2 project, BEVM, has completed its seed round and part of its Series A round, raising tens of millions of USD from over 20 investors including RockTree Capital, Waterdrip Capital, and ViaBTC Capital. The project's Series A valuation has reached $200m and aims to accelerate its international development and roll-out. BEVM is an EVM-compatible Bitcoin Layer2 network built on Taproot Consensus, which uses $BTC as gas and aims to bring 10% of $BTC into its Layer2 network environment. The project's mainnet is scheduled to launch on March 28th and has already implemented decentralized Bitcoin cross-chain custody services through Schnorr Signature, MAST, and Bitcoin SPVs.

  • Ethereum on-chain DEX transaction volume exceeded $2.1 billion yesterday

    According to DeFiLlama data, the trading volume of DEX on the Ethereum blockchain on March 28th was 2.111 billion US dollars, ranking first. The daily trading volume of DEX on the BSC chain was 1.398 billion US dollars, ranking second; the daily trading volume of DEX on the Solana chain was 1.097 billion US dollars, ranking third.

  • Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior has approved the establishment of a cryptocurrency industry association

    Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior has approved the application of the local cryptocurrency industry to establish an industry association. The local cryptocurrency industry working group, which was established last year to prepare for the establishment of the industry association, said that the working group now needs to complete all preparations and officially establish the cryptocurrency industry association by the end of June as required by the government. The working group is currently composed of 22 cryptocurrency companies, including Taiwan's major exchanges such as MaiCoin and BitoPro. The working group pointed out that ACE Exchange has been expelled from the group because the troubled exchange is under investigation by prosecutors for improper behavior by its former executives.

  • Grayscale ETH Trust negative premium rate is 22.77%

    According to ChainCatcher news and Coinglass data, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Fund (GBTC) has a premium rate of 0.02%. The Grayscale ETH Trust has a negative premium rate of 22.77%, and the ETC Trust has a negative premium rate of 36.58%.In addition, the Grayscale BCH Trust has a premium rate of 238.13%, the LTC Trust has a premium rate of 380.60%, the SOL Trust has a premium rate of 515.93%, the MANA Trust has a premium rate of 726.65%, the LINK Trust has a premium rate of 713.66%, and the FIL Trust has a premium rate of 3057.89%.

  • Net inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs reached $179 million on March 28

    Spot on Chain, a blockchain data monitoring platform, posted on social media that the net inflow of spot bitcoin ETF on March 28th reached 179 million US dollars, a decrease of 26.9% compared to the previous trading day. After 54 trading days, the total net inflow accumulated to 12.13 billion US dollars, which is the level before the last fully negative trading week. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) and Grayscale's GBTC both saw a significant slowdown in daily inflows and outflows on March 28th.

  • Bitcoin spot ETF had a total net inflow of US$179 million yesterday, and the ETF net asset ratio reached 4.25%

    According to SoSoValue data, the Bitcoin spot ETF had a total net inflow of $179 million yesterday (March 28th, US Eastern Time).Yesterday, Grayscale's ETF GBTC had a net outflow of $104 million, and its historical net outflow is $14.77 billion. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest net inflow yesterday was BlackRock's ETF IBIT, with a net inflow of approximately $95.12 million, and its historical total net inflow has reached $13.96 billion. The second is Fidelity's ETF FBTC, with a net inflow of approximately $68.09 million yesterday, and its historical total net inflow has reached $7.56 billion.As of now, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETF is $59.1 billion, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value compared to the total market value of Bitcoin) is 4.25%, with a historical total net inflow of $12.12 billion.

  • Ethereum Inscription ETHS rose over 95% in 24H

    CoinGecko data shows that Ethereum Inscription ETHS has risen by 95.9% in the last 24 hours, now reporting at 7.51 USDT. Earlier, Ethereum founder Vitalik released the latest long article "Ethereum has blobs. Where do we go from here?". As a result of this news, the price of Ethereum Inscription ETHS soared.

  • Binance exec sues Nigeria’s National Security Agency over detention

    According to CoinGape, Tigran Gambaryan, a detained executive of Binance, has filed a lawsuit against the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria. Local media reported that on March 28th, Tigran Gambaryan sued the National Security Agency, accusing it of violating his basic human rights and seeking five major remedies from the court.He urged the court to approve the return of his passport and to release him immediately after more than three weeks of detention. He also requested a ban on future detention in similar investigations and demanded public apologies from the National Security Agency and the EFCC.In addition, he requested that the court pay the full amount of compensation for the lawsuit.