Bitcoin’s hash rate is hovering around all-time highs[1], but many miners are still struggling to recover from regulatory changes in regions that became major hubs for the industry.
During the summer of 2021, China’s bitcoin mining ban catalyzed a 50%[2] drop in hash rate in the span of barely two months. But on February 15, Bitcoin’s hash rate topped 210 exahashes (EH)[3] for the first time ever. This record amount of computing power dedicated to securing the network marks a roughly 30% increase from Bitcoin’s hash rate peak in 2021, before China banned mining.
By only looking at Bitcoin’s rising hash rate, it can easily be inferred that the mining industry has recovered from China’s ban. But hash rate recovery hides the ongoing struggles of many miners who labored to relocate outside of China and now face a fresh round of regulatory headaches and operational challenges elsewhere in Asia.
Moving To Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan has historically been a popular and welcoming destination for Bitcoin miners. In July 2020, the Kazakh government estimated[4] that roughly 14 full-scale cryptocurrency mining farms were operational inside its borders. And government ministers have regularly made public statements about the hundreds of millions of dollars[5] they expected to flow into Kazakhstan’s cryptocurrency mining sector.
Following China’s mining ban, some estimates reported that Kazakhstan’s share of Bitcoin hash rate more than doubled[6] in three months, from roughly 10% in June 2021 to 22% in August as exiled miners relocated to Central Asia. Other miners (discussed later in this article) with existing operations in the region planned to accelerate the country’s mining growth even more by announcing significant operational expansions.
But Kazakhstan has struggled to cope with the surge of new
