President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed the law “On Digital Assets in the Republic of Kazakhstan” on Monday, February 6. New document allows miners to consume electricity only if there is a surplus in the national grid. These surpluses in the form of megawatts of capacity will be distributed among licensed electricity supplier operators through special auctions.. Miners will be forced to apply, respectively, to these operators.
Kazakhstan struggles to cope with increased demand for electricity and strain on grid infrastructure. The demand, Republican officials say, has come from the huge influx of bitcoin miners in recent years, including from China.
At the beginning of the year, the National Bank of Kazakhstan launched a pilot project to create a digital tenge. The authorities and regulators of the country hope that the national digital currency will help the integration of banks and DeFi.