With the price of Bitcoin skyrocketing this year, there was a potential problem: miners were no longer profitable. Kazakhstan is a country that is considering switching to nuclear power to keep its mining industry running at full capacity. Will using nuclear power produce enough electricity?
The “what does crypto mining mean” is a question that has been asked by many. Kazakhstan could turn to nuclear power to keep its Bitcoin mining industry going.
According to Nikkei Asia, the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has proposed establishing a nuclear power plant to enable Bitcoin mining to boost Kazakhstan’s lucrative crypto mining industry.
“We will have to make an unpleasant choice in the future regarding the construction of a nuclear power plant,” Tokayev said at a banking conference in Almaty last Friday.
In April this year, Tokayev met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to explore the possibility of developing a nuclear power plant. However, due to the harsh criticism it received at the time, the concept was not accepted.
Opponents were quick to comment, calling the nuclear facility proposal an “ecological disaster waiting to happen”. Despite growing unrest among Kazakhs, President Tokayev is committed to pursuing the concept and has dismissed residents’ concerns over the construction of a nuclear power plant as “inappropriate”.
The impending power outage in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan’s cheap energy has made the country a favored destination for crypto mining. When China tackled Bitcoin mining in the nation, a large number of exiled miners fled to Kazakhstan, where they could mine crypto without government intervention and take advantage of Kazakhstan’s readily available and cheap power.
The country’s energy supply must quadruple to support such a large number of crypto miners to meet the rising demand for Bitcoin mining.
According to IP data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, Kazakhstan controls about 35 percent of Bitcoin mining power, second only to the United States.
Kazakhstan now has a serious power problem due to the unexpected spike in crypto mining activity, and residents are witnessing regular power outages.
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Posted in: Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, mining
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