Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security (SCNS) shut down 500 cryptocurrency mining farms a local news site called 24 reported Saturday, ostensibly so they could no longer put undue strain on the country’s power grid.
“More than 500 mining farms illegally connected to power grids have been revealed,” SCNS said in a statement that was published by 24. “It should be noted that the mining farms subsequently lead to a shortage of generated electricity, since one set of equipment consumes about 1,500-3,000 kilowatts per hour.”
Kyrgyzstan’s SNCS conducts counter-terrorism operations and is responsible for rooting out organized crime in the country. The agency doesn’t appear to have released an official statement elsewhere about this incident—its website is unreachable at the time of writing—and we don’t have details on the scope of the 500 mining operations. For example, how large were these farms, and did they use ASICs or PCs with graphics cards? If they were illegally stealing power, old Bitcoin ASICs would be the likely culprit, since they’re otherwise not profitable for mining these days.
