Japan's Largest Online Broker To Shut Crypto Mining In Russia
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The future of the mining industry in Siberia is questionable in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and mining tokens have become less lucrative due to the collapse of the global cryptocurrency market. Hideyuki Katsuchi, chief financial officer, made the plan to sell the equipment and leave it public earlier this week.
Beijing's Crypto Mining Ban
After Beijing's crypto mining ban last May drove the miners out of China, they went to Russia, partly to take advantage of low-cost electricity from natural gas and hydropower dams, making it a popular destination besides North America. But in April, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned BitRiver, a cryptocurrency mining business with headquarters in Switzerland, because of its operations in Russia. Soon after, American company Compass Mining Inc. tried to sell $30 million worth of equipment in Siberia to dodge sanctions.
SBI Holdings Expanded Digital Currencies
According to the representative, SBI Holdings, which has expanded into digital currencies more quickly than most Japanese financial institutions, stopped mining in Siberia shortly after the war started. In the three months ending June 30, the company's crypto asset division reported a pretax loss of 9.7 billion yen ($72 million). He said that the group, backed by Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, swung to a ¥2.4 billion net loss for the period, its first quarterly loss in a decade. SBI has yet to decide when it will complete the withdrawal from Siberia, the spokesman said. He said the company has no other cryptocurrency operations in Russia and will continue to run SBI Bank LLC, its commercial banking division with offices in Moscow.
The International Monetary Fund cautioned that cryptocurrency mining would give Russia a way around broad economic sanctions put in place by the United States and other western nations in a report published in April. Countries that have been sanctioned can use their energy resources to power mining while earning money straight through transaction fees.