Residents of Svaneti, Georgia, have reportedly been forced to take a sacred oath that they will not mine cryptocurrency in order to deal with the energy shortage caused by bitcoin mining.
According to Macrotrends Trends, the economy of Northwest Svaneti in Georgia depends on tourism spending, which grew annually from 2000 to 2019. However, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, tourism declined sharply in 2020 and only recently started to return to pre-existing levels of growth. Covid.
To make ends meet, hundreds of residents have resorted to cryptocurrency mining, which has been blamed for the severe power outage.
In a video broadcast by local media Sputnik Georgia, miners are seen gathering outside the church on December 30, 2021 taking the holy oath to St. George that they will not return the cryptocurrency. Such promises are usually seen as unbreakable bonds.
Cryptocurrency mining has become a controversial topic, with residents holding protests in the city of Svaneti in Mestia and electricity company Energo Pro threatening to raise electricity prices.
Svaneti is a mountainous region of Georgia that currently has free electricity in some parts, which makes mining more attractive.
This situation is becoming more and more common all over the world. Bitcoin miners are flocking to countries with cheap energy, alarming local residents. In the case of Kosovo and Kazakhstan, governments have banned cryptocurrency mining in order to maintain gr.
At the end of 2021, the municipality of Mestia issued a statement explaining the extent to which crypto-mining has disrupted the local energy supply. “Compared to previous years, consumption has increased by 237% this year,” she says.
Energy company Energo Pro described the massive increase in consumption as “unsustainable”. On January 5, the company told local media that the area was using 27 megawatts, nearly four times the capacity the infrastructure was designed to handle.
Related: Bitcoin miners resisting geopolitics are a good sign for the network
Kosovo in southern Europe recently banned cryptocurrency mining due to dangerous winter runoff. On January 10, the Kosovo government confiscated 300 mining rigs, forcing mining companies to sell their rigs or move to neighboring countries.
Kazakhstan was the second most active bitcoin mining country, but it effectively shut down miners amid political protests in the first week of this year. An internet power outage in the Central Asian country caused hash power on the Bitcoin network to drop by 13.4%.
