BitRiver, Russia’s biggest industrial crypto mining firm, has announced it is building a new 100MW data center in Eastern Siberia.
The firm’s BitRiver-B subsidiary has already started building the new center, officially a “data processing center for energy-intensive computing.”
The company now plans to launch operations at the center “in the second half of 2024.”
BitRiver: Subsidiary Builds New Plant in Russia’s Far East
Per the media outlet RBC, the firm announced that the center will be principally used “for cryptocurrency mining.”
BitRiver-B said it would spend “over” $15.15 million on the new center. The facility will be located in Buryatia, a largely mountainous republic that borders Mongolia to the south.
The media outlet quoted Sergei Bezdelov, director of the Industrial Mining Association (APM), as calling the new plant “the largest data center in the Republic of Buryatia and the Far Eastern Federal District.”
The mining industry chief claimed that construction began on the center in 2022. The firm has also released images of building work at the site.
Source: BitRiver
Bezdelov claimed that work would continue on what he called a “landmark investment project for the Far East and all of Russia,” despite “the company’s inclusion on the US Treasury’s sanctions list.”
Washington added BitRiver to its list of sanctioned Russian firms in April 2022. However, the firm’s CEO this year claimed that mining Bitcoin would become vastly more profitable in Russian than in the USA following the next BTC halving event.
BitRiver boss Igor Runets also stated that Russia’s “energy balance” was “one of the greenest in the world.”
He said that this due to the nation’s “high share of hydroelectric and nuclear power plants.”
Bezdelov, meanwhile, added that the firm would employ “about 120 high-class specialists” at the new center.
He claimed that the mining firm also wants to ensure it fosters young talent at the new center.
Officials claimed that “one of the world’s largest hardware vendors of artificial intelligence technology” visited the building site to “assess its suitability for solving AI problems.”
The officials claimed that the unnamed AI vendors made their visit in “mid-February.”
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The association estimates that “the entire sphere of high-performance and energy-intensive computing in Russia” could “consume up to several tens of GW” by 2035.
And the body added that BitRiver-B’s new data center would “specialize in high-performance energy-intensive computing.”
Its Activities, the APM said, would include “mining, cloud services, and other advanced digital services.”
Despite BitRiver and Bezdelov’s zeal, however, the future of crypto mining still remains in the balance in Russia.
The country’s Central Bank has repeatedly called for a ban on all forms of crypto-related activity, including mining.
In recent months, the bank has showed signs that it is prepared to compromise in the case of industrial miners.
The EU should consider new set of sanctions on Russia following the death of Alexey Navalny, Sweden’s prime minister says https://t.co/4TD4sVHtjF
— Bloomberg (@business) February 19, 2024
However, the bank wants to ensure miners sell their coins immediately on overseas exchanges.
This move, law enforcers think, could potentially open the door to money laundering schemes.
The energy ministry, meanwhile, wants to raise industrial miners’ electricity tariffs. The APM has warned that hiking fees could blunt Russia’s competitive edge in the global crypto mining arena.
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