This is Kosovo, whose government published a decree a few days ago banning cryptocurrency mining under pain of heavy penalties, in an attempt to reduce electricity consumption. He says it is necessary because the country is facing the worst energy crisis it has ever seen, which risks collapsing the entire economy in the long run.
All law enforcement agencies must ruthlessly prosecute those ex officio who fail to comply with this order and continue to mine cryptocurrencies, the Kosovar Minister of Economy and Energy said. Cryptocurrency mining has spread at an alarming rate in Kosovo in recent years, especially among young people. One of the reasons is that Kosovo’s electricity is one of the cheapest in Europe.
Faced with the shutdown of coal-fired power stations and the high prices of imported electricity, the Kosovar authorities were forced to cut the power. The case is so serious that the government of Kosovo declared a two-month state of emergency in December last year and decided to allocate more money to importing energy, which should, at least for a while, avoid the crisis.
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Kosovo is currently inhabited by less than two million people, and cryptocurrency mining is mainly carried out by the population living in the north of the country. Most of them are Serbs, also hostile to the Kosovar authorities (ethnic quarrels) and often boycott offices, refusing for example to pay 40% imported electricity bills.
The situation is made worse by the fact that 90% of the electricity produced in Kosovo comes from the combustion of extremely toxic lignite, which contributes to environmental pollution. And you should know that Kosovo has the fifth largest lignite reserves in the world. The country is estimated to have around 14 billion tonnes of this fuel.
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