Russia Seizes Over 8,000 Illegal Cryptocurrency Mining Sites

According to DL News, Irkutskenergosbyt—a state-owned power company in Russia’s Irkutsk Oblast—recently identified over 8,000 suspected illegal cryptocurrency mining operations disguised as chicken coops, greenhouses, forests, paper mills, and abandoned gas stations. Since 2019, the company has filed 2,170 lawsuits against illegal miners, seeking a total of $18.5 million in compensation; courts have ordered fines amounting to roughly half that sum, while some cases were settled out of court. Miners frequently mask their activities as electric-vehicle charging or agricultural power use, resulting in electricity losses. To safeguard grid stability, several Russian regions have shut down licensed industrial mining facilities and plan to deploy artificial intelligence tools to detect illegal mining.