Edit: see stompix's post below, the 12% drop might be questionable.https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoin-price-down-federal-reserve-interest-rates-kazakhstan-bitcoin-mining-1666203Part of the article is about the price drop due to fed minutes but that's already been discussed all over the Speculation board etc. The second part of the article seems more interesting:
Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining—the process by which new Bitcoins are created—has been affected this week by a large internet shutdown in the central Asian country of Kazakhstan.
The network blackout came amid political turmoil and protests. For Bitcoin, this meant that one of the world's biggest mining communities took a hit.
It is difficult to know exactly how much of all the world's Bitcoins are mined in Kazakhstan, Fortune reported, but Larry Cermak, a researcher at cryptocurrency news site The Block, tweeted on Wednesday that there was a 12 percent drop in Bitcoin's "hash rate," which is a measure of how many miners are involved in the Bitcoin network at a given time.
This comes after
China banned Bitcoin mining last year and some of that hash power moved to the neighboring Kazakhstan but it wasn't a particularly smooth process. Quote from another article about a month ago:
In October, Kazakhstan faced a shortfall of electricity after the country’s largest power station had to shut two units for maintenance with a combined capacity of 1,000 megawatts, roughly 5% of the country’s power supply. At the same time, electricity demand was surging. In the first nine months of the year, the country experienced additional power use during peak hours equivalent to the Almaty region, the most populous part of the country. Much of that came from the miners.
There are about 50 registered cryptocurrency mining data centers; as of October, they were consuming almost 700 megawatts of power. There are also unregistered operations, known as gray miners, that needed an additional 250 megawatts, the Energy Ministry said.
Electric grids require a precise balance between demand and supply. With so much generation unavailable, Kazakhstan began to target the miners to prevent the power grid from suffering blackouts.
Kazakhstan's energy ministry considered issuing an order to restrict power consumption by new cryptocurrency miners, but after public discussion in October dropped the plan. It amended existing legislation instead, allowing grid operator Kegoc to limit or reduce power supply to digital miners in the event of a power deficit and to avoid emergency situations.
Two months ago:
The Kazakh government plans to crack down first on unregistered "grey" miners who it estimates might be consuming twice as much power as the "white" or officially registered ones.
"I think we will have the directive (limiting power to unregistered miners) issued before the end of this year, because this issue cannot be delayed any longer," Deputy Energy Minister Murat Zhurebekov said this month.
He did not explain how authorities planned to locate "grey" miners, whose farms are often hidden in basements or abandoned factories. But sources say their heat signatures could be detected by satellites.
If you're wondering why Bitcoin miners have remained in Kazakhstan throughout government crackdowns and energy blackouts:
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Kazakhstan/
