The largest mining farms in Russia

As of the beginning of 2022, BitRiver has about 75 thousand devices. The company plans to increase production capacity. Another site for 100 thousand devices is under construction.

It is noteworthy that the company itself is not engaged in mining. BitRiver rents sites for the placement of client equipment. The package of services includes:

• Device maintenance
• Internet connection
• Cheap electricity.

Specialists can perform equipment repair. Employees of the units were trained at the ASIC manufacturing plants, have the appropriate certificates.

The company guarantees uninterrupted access to the Internet via wireless and fiber-optic channels. To supply asics with electricity, BitRiver cooperates with a partner – En+Group. This is the world’s largest aluminum producer. En+Group is engaged in the development of hydropower. The company owns the Bratskaya HPP. BitRiver and En+Group have signed an agreement on the supply of renewable electricity during 2021-2022.

The company pays attention to environmental protection. Thanks to the direct connection to the Bratskaya HPP, the environmental impact is minimized. The BitRiver data center received a positive verification of the report on the absence of greenhouse gas emissions from the BSI organization (UK).

BitRiver has its own token BTR. The cryptocurrency will start trading in April 2021. BTR is created on the Ethereum blockchain (ERC-20 standard). A unit of cryptocurrency is equivalent to 1Wh. With BitRiver (BTR), users can perform operations such as:

• Mining coins and tokens. The company commits to supply electricity equivalent to the face value of BTR.
• Obtain additional tokens. To do this, it is necessary to block assets on the Bithumb exchange.
• Pay for the rental and repair of equipment.

BitRiver undertakes to buy back tokens from holders at a price of $0.35. The scheduled date of the transaction is April 12, 2026. All redeemed BTR tokens will be burned.

At the end of 2021, En+Group announced a second joint project with BitRiver for low-cost mining of digital assets with minimal emissions. The plan is to bring the total capacity of the data centers to 500 MW.

BitRiver is working with miners from different countries in early 2022. Among the company’s clients are representatives of such states:

• Russia
• USA
• China
• Japan and others.

Physically, the data center is located near the Bratsk Aluminum Plant. Mining in these places is facilitated by the climate – long winters (up to 8 months a year), cool spring and fall. Weather conditions allow the company to save on cooling system, so the cost of bitcoin and altcoin mining is relatively low.

The construction of the data center near Bratsk has had a positive impact on the region. The company has created additional jobs. BitRiver has the following job openings in February 2022:

• Dispatchers
• Equipment repair technicians
• Electricians
• Security guards.

Each shift employs about 50 people. BitRiver also holds seminars at Bratsk University on blockchain and digital technologies. The company cooperates with the city administration and participates in the development of the region.

Farm in Kirishi

In the Leningrad region there is another center for mining digital assets. Kirishi is a small town 150 kilometers from St. Petersburg, where one of the largest mining farms in Russia was launched in 2018.

The project is managed by the company “CryptoUnivers” together with the Russian Association of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain (RAKIB). Also the governor of the Leningrad region Alexander Drozdenko is the initiator of the creation. Industrial buildings of the former chemical plant, which now belongs to the Levoberezhny Technopark, were used for the data center. The total investment in the establishment of the enterprise amounted to 500 million rubles.

The prerequisites for the construction of a mining center in Kirishi were:

• An excessive amount of power capacity in the region.
• Acceptable prices for electricity.
• Availability of qualified personnel.

The mining farm includes about 3 thousand devices with a total capacity of 20 MW. They occupy a space of 4 thousand square meters. The company leases plots for the installation of equipment.

Farm in the Leningrad Region

In addition to Kirishi, the leadership of the region planned to create another data center. The farm for bitcoin and altcoin production was to be located in Sosnovy Bor. This is a satellite city of St. Petersburg, located 40 kilometers to the west. The nuclear power plant LNPP is located here, which has been gradually phased out since 2018.

The government of the Leningrad region decided to create a mining farm based on cheap energy. Initially it was planned to launch the data center in 2021. However, due to the lack of a legislative framework, it does not work.

Farm in Divnogorsk

Another large cryptocurrency mining center in Russia belongs to the company BitBaza. It is located in the city of Divnogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk region. The project is built on the basis of the Divny technopark. The choice of the region for the location of the farm is related to the surplus of electricity, low production costs and cool climate. The last criterion provides savings on coolers. Cryptocurrency mining in the Krasnoyarsk region is approved by the RAKIB association.

For the construction of one of the largest mining crypto farms in Russia, the territory of the former Divnogorsk plant of low-voltage automatons was chosen. Initially, it was planned to create a production facility with a capacity of 10 MW with the possibility of scaling up more than 10 times.

As of February 2022, the company has abandoned the creation of a data center. The site for the farm is up for sale. According to the authors of the project, about 3 billion rubles are needed to create the infrastructure. Construction has been discontinued due to lack of investment.

Since January 1, 2021, the law “On digital financial assets” has been in force in the Russian Federation. According to the document, you can trade in cryptocurrency, but you can not use it as a means of payment. At the beginning of 2022, there were prerequisites for a complete ban on digital assets. However, in February, a concept to regulate the cryptocurrency market was approved. Transactions with digital assets will not be banned. The legislator plans to introduce strict rules for digital service providers. Integration of the crypto market into the country’s financial system is also announced.

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