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Russian crypto miners do not seem bothered by the ongoing crypto mining crisis, as demand for special mining hardware has been increasing in the last quarter of 2022.
According to Russian news agency Kommersant, there has been a huge increase in demand for application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for crypto mining in Russia. This is due to a reduction in the prices of these ASIC devices as well as low cost energy.
Over the past nine months, ASIC distributors in Russia are said to have sold 65 percent more equipment compared to 2021. Chilkoot, a local dealer, said ASIC sales in October and November exceeded all sales in the third quarter of 2022.
Chilkoot’s head of development Artem said: “We work with legal entities and we see that they started to buy 30% more equipment in one transaction than at the beginning of the year.”
Russia’s largest data center facility focused on crypto mining, BitRiver, reported that it has registered a sharp increase in demand as its growth in the last ten months has been around 150 percent.
This surge in demand for crypto mining hardware in Russia contrasts with the Bitcoin community elsewhere going through a tough time as bitcoin mining revenues hit a two-year low. Mining companies such as Core Scientific and Argo Blockchain have faced huge losses due to the ongoing bear market and are in doubt as to whether or not they will be able to continue operating.
The co-founder of 51ASIC, Mikhail Brezhnev, believes that the mining of BTC in Russia can still be profitable even though there has been a massive drop in the price of Bitcoin since last year. He explained that the cost of mining a Bitcoin with the most up-to-date hardware at an electricity cost of $0.07/kWh can be around $11,000, while BTC trades for around $17,000 at the current time.
According to Vladislav Antonov, BitRiver’s financial analyst, entering the mining industry during a bear market like the one going on right now can generate significant profits over the next three years. He added that the cost of ASIC equipment has come as close to the cost of production as possible, so now is the best time to get into the crypto mining business.
The author is the founder of yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash
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