Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow under a clear blue sky

Russia Just Pulled Bitcoin Miners From Its Capital—And Power Is Only Part of the Story

By Isaac • August 15, 2026 11:28 pm • Comments

Russia has ordered Bitcoin miners out of its capital and several nearby areas for more than six years. On the surface, this is a power-grid story.

Underneath it is a revealing clash between energy limits, sanctions and the country’s attempt to turn mining into strategic infrastructure.

CoinDesk reported that Moscow, the surrounding Moscow Region and parts of Kursk are now covered by a year-round crypto-mining ban running through December 31, 2032. Participation in mining pools is prohibited there as well.

Trending: Paul Tudor Jones Made a Big Bitcoin ETF Move. The Options Shift Complicates the Story

The restriction was established under government decree No. 936. The decree was signed July 25 and published July 31, according to local reporting reviewed by CoinDesk.

Russia legalized registered crypto mining in 2024, then imposed electricity-driven bans in ten regions through March 2031. Year-round restrictions later reached southern Irkutsk and most of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai.

The Moscow order is the latest step in that retreat. It reaches the political and commercial center of a country that ranked as the world’s second-largest source of Bitcoin computing power during the first quarter of 2026.

CoinDesk also tied the policy to a broader data-center squeeze. Mining is one unusually mobile user of electricity, but it now competes with conventional computing facilities for finite regional capacity.

Luxor’s Hashrate Index estimated Russia at 175 exahashes per second, equal to 16.4% of global Bitcoin hashrate. Only the United States was larger.

The available data does not show how much of that capacity was located inside the newly restricted regions. It does show why a ban covering Moscow matters: the order reaches the political and commercial center of a country that had deliberately opened the door to registered mining in 2024.

The Energy Ministry’s stated concern is grid stability. Mining already consumes roughly 1 gigawatt in the Moscow power system, according to figures reported by Interfax.

Data-center capacity in the region could reach 3.6 GW by 2032, or about 17% of projected peak demand.

That means miners are competing for capacity with a much broader data-center buildout. A global industry can move machines, but a regional power system cannot instantly add generation and transmission wherever demand appears.

The pressure is not unique to a government restriction. Public miners and crypto-focused companies are also making hard decisions when balance sheets tighten.

Russia’s policy has another layer. The country has kept a ban on ordinary domestic crypto payments while preserving exceptions for foreign-trade settlements and transactions involving mined cryptocurrency.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in December 2024 that Russian companies had begun using domestically mined Bitcoin in international payments after legal changes. That gave mining a role beyond speculation: newly produced coins could help businesses settle across borders when conventional financial channels were constrained.

Washington had already identified that possibility. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned BitRiver and ten subsidiaries, arguing that mining companies could help Russia monetize energy resources and offset the impact of sanctions.

So the Moscow ban cuts both ways. It may protect a strained grid, but it also limits an industry the Russian state had allowed to grow and use in cross-border commerce.

The size of the broader Bitcoin market makes that tradeoff more consequential. Mining secures the network, but demand for power, machines and capital all rise as the ecosystem scales.

The new order shows that legalization did not settle the argument. Russia wants the economic and geopolitical utility of mined Bitcoin, but local grids still impose a hard physical ceiling.

For miners, the message is blunt: favorable national policy does not guarantee access to cheap power. For Bitcoin, it is another reminder that a borderless network still depends on very local infrastructure.

Join the conversation!

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

 

Search ProCoinNews