The European nation of Kosovo has banned all bitcoin and crypto mining as a means of saving electricity. The country is currently facing one of the worst energy crises it’s ever experienced, and it’s allegedly due to production outages.
Kosovo Becomes the Next Country to Ban BTC Mining
Artane Rizvanolli – the economy and energy minister – explained in a statement:
All law enforcement agencies will stop the production of this activity in cooperation with other relevant institutions that will identify the locations where there is cryptocurrency production.
Kosovo features some of the cheapest electricity costs across the globe, and thus many people in the country – particularly young people – have gotten involved in the growing crypto mining fad. However, Kosovo largely depends on coal, and with the number of outages the nation has suffered from in recent years, it looks like regulators feel crypto no longer has a place within Kosovo’s borders. It has now become the second nation – after China – to directly ban the practice.
This opens Pandora’s box in many ways, as several analysts warned that with China banning bitcoin and crypto mining, there were likely to be other nations that follow in its footsteps. Perhaps Kosovo will be the first of several…
China first made headlines over the summer when it stated that it was going to ban all bitcoin and crypto mining projects given that rules from Beijing demanded that things become more carbon neutral. This shocked people across the world given that China was home to about 65 or even 75 percent of the globe’s mining firms, so the idea that everyone involved in the industry suddenly had to find a new place to live overnight was a little frightening.
Things didn’t stop there. China eventually announced that all bitcoin and crypto transactions were illegal. Thus, the mining ban was just the first step. Now, all traders in the country had nowhere to put their assets.
In addition, crypto mining has been getting a bad rap from several people over the past two years, some of which are high-profile individuals that have been heavily involved in the crypto industry. Elon Musk, for example, purchased more than $1 billion in BTC in early 2021. From there, he announced that BTC could be used to purchase Tesla vehicles, though he quickly rescinded this decision saying that miners were not controlling their emissions or using their energy correctly.
A Lot of Hate for Mining
Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame also got involved, claiming that he was not going to be purchasing anymore bitcoin mined in China given that the country did not use green extraction tactics.
Gas prices in Europe are about 30 percent higher due to low supplies from Russia. Last month, the nation of Kosovo declared a state of emergency that allowed the government to allocate more funds to its energy industry.
