Russia has banned Bitcoin mining and participation in mining pools across Moscow, the surrounding Moscow Region, and parts of the Kursk Region, cutting off operations in one of the country's most mining-dense areas. The restriction, imposed under government decree No. 936, was signed July 25, published July 31, and took effect August 15. It runs through December 31, 2032.
The Russian Energy Ministry framed the move as a grid-protection measure, stating that a year-round restriction was needed to reduce the risk of power-capacity shortages as energy-intensive mining facilities continue connecting to regional grids. Mining currently draws roughly 1 gigawatt from the Moscow power system, and regional data-center capacity tied to mining could otherwise have climbed to 3.6 gigawatts — about 17% of peak regional demand — by 2032 if left unchecked.
A Major Slice of Global Hashrate
The stakes extend well beyond Moscow. Russia accounted for roughly 175 exahashes per second in the first quarter of 2026, or about 16.4% of Bitcoin's global computing power — second only to the United States. Hashrate Index's Q3 2026 heatmap puts Russia's current share even higher, at 17.2% of global hashrate, underscoring how much capacity now sits in a country that has spent the past two years rolling out regional bans piecemeal rather than a single nationwide prohibition.
The Moscow restriction is the latest in that pattern. Russia has now barred mining in 13 regions in total, a rollout that has reportedly affected roughly 50,000 mining operators since it began. The bans follow Russia's formal legalization of registered mining in 2024, a move that briefly positioned the country as a rare example of a major economy embracing mining even as it restricted it geographically.
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Where the Hashrate Goes Next
Regional mining bans have a well-documented tendency to relocate hashrate rather than eliminate it. When China imposed its own comprehensive mining ban in 2021, operators migrated en masse to the United States, Kazakhstan and, notably, Russia itself — the same country now tightening its own restrictions. Analysts expect a similar pattern this time, with capacity likely shifting toward the U.S. and Central Asia, though Kazakhstan's position as a landing spot looks less certain than it once did: the country dropped out of the top 10 mining hubs for the first time in Hashrate Index's tracking, while Iran has been stuck near a roughly 2 exahash-per-second floor, down 71% year-over-year.
Russian officials have also tied mining policy to sanctions strategy. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has noted that Russian companies have used domestically mined bitcoin in international payments under legal changes designed to help route around Western sanctions — a dynamic that makes the Moscow ban as much a domestic energy-policy decision as a geopolitical one. BitRiver, a major Russian mining firm sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2022 along with ten subsidiaries, is among the operators whose Moscow-area capacity is now affected.
What It Means for Bitcoin's Network
A shift of this scale rarely moves Bitcoin's difficulty overnight, since miners typically have months of lead time to relocate rigs before enforcement bites. But if a meaningful share of Russia's roughly 175 exahashes goes offline faster than it can be redeployed elsewhere, it could offer a temporary profitability boost to miners in other regions until the network's difficulty adjustment catches up.
