Cryptocurrencies and processing power in Russia: a new strategic territory in eastern Siberia?

Abstract

This paper analyses the emerging Russian cryptocurrency mining industry, with a particular focus on eastern Siberia. This major strategic industry provides the region with a growing calculation power and fosters potential innovations – in encryption especially. In fact, the crypto-mining industry has noticeably coalesced in eastern Siberia because the region offers a series of geographic, climatic, economic and technical advantages – the magnitude of which is hard to match anywhere else in the world. This article focuses on the oblast of Irkutsk and shows how crypto-mining has come to encompass both economic and political powers and to involve a number of Russian actors and infrastructures. Ultimately, the local dynamics in eastern Siberia teach us a lot about the fate of the industry nationally.