Vasily Shpak: “Miners burn more electricity than all agriculture”

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The Deputy Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation announced that the extraction of digital currencies takes 2% the total amount of electricity consumed.

Vasily Shpak in an interview with the agencyInterfax said that, according to its data, miners spend several times more electricity than agriculture consumes, so the market urgently needs regulation.

The official said that the authorities could not recognizemining by industrial activity or sector of the economy. Mining digital currencies is now in a “gray area”, is not subject to taxes and creates risks for the people who do it. According to Shpak, this activity needs to be taken out of the gray area, rules must be developed and the industry must be made clear and transparent to the authorities.

“Yes, most likely, for mining in the near futuretime will be spent less energy overall, because the world in terms of digital currencies is moving to other, less expensive protocols. But nevertheless, it is obvious that these are calculations; they will consume energy one way or another. Here our position is completely clear: mining must be recognized, regulated and integrated into industrial activity.”

According to the Cambridge Consumption Indexenergy by Bitcoin miners, Russia ranked third in terms of mining volume, but recently dropped out of the top 3 countries in the world. Currently, Russian miners generate about 4.7% of the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network. The USA remains in first place with 37.8%, second and third places are taken by China and Kazakhstan, respectively.