Russia’s Tatarstan eyes building $100m Bitcoin mining center

Fintech company Innopolis Tech, controlled by a former communications minister of Russia, is preparing to build Russia’s largest Bitcoin mining center worth about $100 million.

According to local news cited by Tatarstan deputy prime minister Roman Shaykhutdinov, the Republic of Tatarstan is preparing to establish Russia’s largest Bitcoin mining infrastructure worth an investment of approximately $100 million.

Speaking at a crypto forum in Kazan, Shaykhutdinov said the project would be undertaken by Innopolis Tech, a fintech company controlled by Russia’s former communications and press minister Nikolai Nikiforov.

Although specific details about the construction timeline and list of investors were not disclosed, Shaykhutdinov said that the projected hashrate of the facility will be 3 exahash per second, potentially making it one of the key players in the global crypto mining industry.

Despite these ambitions, Russia still does not have a clear regulatory regime for crypto miners. In late April, Russian lawmakers unveiled a new version of a bill aimed at regulating the crypto mining market in the country. According to Anatoly Aksakov, one of the bill’s authors, the bill could come into force as early as September this year, but this is not the first time lawmakers in Russia have tried to create a regulatory regime for crypto miners.

In mid-February, BitRiver, the Bitcoin mining company targeted by OFAC sanctions, also announced plans to launch Russia’s largest data center focused on artificial intelligence.

As crypto.news reported, Bitriver-B, a subsidiary of BitRiver Group, will launch the largest data center for energy-intensive computing in Eurasia in the second half of 2024. The expected capacity of the data center is said to be 100. Megawatt, Sergey Bezdelov, director of the Industrial Mining Association, reported.