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Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining after blackouts:
The government says security services will identify and clamp down on sources of cryptocurrency mining.
The mining is energy intensive and involves verifying digital transactions to get cryptocurrencies as a reward.
While all of Europe faces sharp price rises, Kosovo is enforcing rolling blackouts amid an electricity shortage.
The Balkan state's largest coal-fired power plant was shut down last month over a technical issue, forcing the government to import electricity at high prices.
A 60-day state of emergency, declared in December, gave the government powers to allocate more money for energy imports and impose stricter restrictions on power usage.
The blackouts have sparked protests and calls for the resignation of Economy Minister Artane Rizvanolli.
Energy prices are skyrocketing across Europe for various reasons, including low supplies from Russia and high demand for natural gas as economies recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The spike has been fuelled by geopolitical tensions with Russia, which supplies one third of Europe's gas. Russia has rejected European accusations that it has limited gas deliveries while tensions are raised
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday January 08, @12:32PM (3 children)
One obvious problem with this narrative is that cryptomining is driven by electricity prices. If electricity is expensive, they'll mine somewhere else. So if it's really a problem, while energy imports are expensive, that means someone is heavily subsidizing electricity consumption. Time to stop doing that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 08, @02:33PM
Maybe electricity for residential use is cheaper there. Obvious solution is to increase the cost of higher usage tiers significantly. So the poor can still get cheap electricity for "base consumption" but those doing significant mining will have higher costs.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 08, @04:13PM (1 child)
I disagree.
https://www.hackread.com/police-seize-illegal-cryptomining-farm-ps4/ [hackread.com]
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=police+raid+cryptomining+stolen+electricity&atb=v306-1&ia=web [duckduckgo.com]
It is my position that most cryptocurrency is a scam. Stolen electricity just adds to the scam. There is no evidence that any cryptominer has ever provided even a single crust of bread for homeless and hungry.
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ― George S. Patton on Ukraine
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 09, @12:10AM