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Russia took third place in the world in bitcoin mining

Russia came third in the world in bitcoin mining - according to data from the University of Cambridge, the country's share in the total computing power of miners reached 11% in August, compared with 6.8% in April.

Read more on RBC:
https://www.rbc.ru/crypto/news/6166cf219a794795164d04a8

https://i.ibb.co/rpzzw6t/5420479556730599445-121.jpg (https://ibb.co/C9YYH7t)
https://cbeci.org/mining_map

Russia Has No Plans to Ban Bitcoin Like China, Says Deputy Finance Minister (https://cryptopotato.com/russia-has-no-plans-to-ban-bitcoin-like-china-says-deputy-finance-minister/). The source is that report (https://www.interfax.ru/business/796822).

The growth of Bitcoin mining in Russia and the public confirmation that the nation does not have plans to ban Bitcoin. We can clear the FUD from Russia and now China is the unique nation with FUD of ban, crackdown, restrictions on Bitcoin. Exclude China, things are good for Bitcoin globally.

Controlling the Mining farms would have meant that Chinese government would have controlled the *hash rate*, which is an important security factor. Transactions would have been insecure and the whole network would have had crashed therefore I do think that it's a really good news that the russian government not only welcomed the miners but at the same time we did see that the recovery was extremely fast, like people were waiting for the opportunity.
-I do think it's an extremely good news which showed how it's not dependent on one person or one country, plus government can try as much as they want but they won't be able to control the cryptocurrencies like bitcoins.

China won't be able to influence the market anymore!! Plus won't even be scaring everyone with threats every one in a while.

Hopefully Russia can be more crypto friendly and the government would not impose heavy taxes on mining. Example regarding taxes taken from google ( IRS, US)

Yeah, hopefully, russia is one of the top powerhouse countries, while most of these countries accept bitcoin such US, japan, germany, only china (total ban) and russia (improving) is opposite while russia is slowly adopting it.  About on taxation, I guess that percentage is just fine for a business that earn/profits millions annually.

I think that Russia could easily become the first if the rate keeps on going up, and that is due to the fact that it presents a safe haven for these kind of actions since laws are pretty much different from what they are in the us, and the fact that bitcoin mining has no specific law tied to it there, and people are not subject to taxes from it yet, makes me think that we will see this rate go up more and more.

I've heard from several TV channels that Russia is also planning to create its own digital currency, the digital ruble, which they will soon launch at the end of this year. The Russian Association of Crypto Economy, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain said that almost 1,100 megawatts of new power plants have been run for Bitcoin mining during 2021.

No doubt, that in the near future they would be the first and on top of USA. Russia is open for innovation and somehow their Government is supporting the growth of Bitcoin in their country. This is quite uplifting but still, there should be no competition in terms of innovation. Well, hoping that the recent issue with China opens a much bigger opportunity not only for these powerhouse countries.

After the China crackdown on cryptocurrency especially Bitcoin mining, look at how Bitcoin's hash rate spread to other countries around the world.
I'm sad about China, hoping they will come back soon as we all know China is one of the best countries to do mining as they got cheap electricity. In next coming months, I am still expecting the US will still grow so much after this.

I am glad to see China is now at the bottom getting zero share of the expanding Bitcoin mining market. And it is now notable that USA is now on the top as it should be...hope the current administration will take some value out of this new reality in this business and will do everything to protect it and make it flourish and never overburden it with so much regulations as there are now many states like Texas leading the way and already planning to use wasted power for mining. And I am hoping too that Russia will not let anything to kill the mining industry blooming in their territory which I heard has this especial zone for crypto-related business set-up. Venezuela will also be figuring soon as they are now starting to use geothermal power for mining and then I heard that Colombia will be using hydro power for mining business. In other words, we are booming...and that is without China on the scene.

Weird, I thought that the Digital rubble has been launched already.

In any case I'm not surprised that bitcoin mining has now shift to Russia, it's a huge nation with lots of are that can be used and electricity that is cheap, plus the environment as well is really fitting to home hundreds if not thousands of asics and even used the heat to their advantage. So it's a win-win situation for small an huge bitcoin miners in Russia.

It is gratifying that Russia is accepting this activity, in fact the global hash rate of mining is increasing, and its fact that despite the fact that China banned mining, the options to migrate to other countries and go to practice this activity are are seeing very good results:

https://i.imgur.com/9gjeVxJ.png

Source: https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-mining-metrics-continue-to-spike-in-most-profitable-year-ever/ (https://bitcoinist.com/bitcoin-mining-metrics-continue-to-spike-in-most-profitable-year-ever/)

From the optimistic point of view, these things help the price of BTC a lot, it is likely that it will continue to grow in price, but we have to wait, as long as the mining activity continues, the BTC will have even more value.

when prices go up, it's profitable. the more profitable the farmers are when electricity is cheap like in Kazakstan. this is good for US to take the place on top since China left. chinese miners fleeing from China.

if they could just remove that regulation plan and let it grow for now and let it be adopted by people, it will make the senators learn how it all works. and when they know how it works, they will eventually learn where they'd put their regulations in place.

But what took my attention is that Kazakhstan taking number 2? just now that i heard this country having that load of mining activities , though I'm sure this leads because China full banning of Mining in their territory .
now that miner scattered every part of the world and this will be the advantage and what China did opens opportunity to other countries gaining reputation for being miner.

If I am not mistaken, Russia's finance ministry had said that they will bring some legislation that will bar the miners to receive their mining proceeds in cryptocurrency. While Russia didn't mention that they will ban mining activities but the crypto payments will still become illegal. A super contradictory law they have drafted already.

Ref: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2020/09/03/russias-latest-draft-bill-would-still-largely-ban-crypto-stifle-miners/

Not sure what the future holds for the Russian miners but doesn't look great at all.

As a rule, newspaper articles about Russia do not show the real situation.
Russia has a huge shadow market, and if you do not want to legalize your income, then the law does not prevent you from doing it.
If you want to legalize income, then it is more profitable to do it in other countries, becoming their tax resident.

That's Russia for you, totally contradicting themselves, that's why news coming from them is not that reliable, unless with Putin who issued the statement, so as others have said, take everything with a grain of salt coming from Russian government.

So let's wait in the next couple of months, I also remember that they were supposed to build a mining facility way back in 2017-2018 timeline, not sure what happen to that idea.

As also said in the other similar topic (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365501.0), there's too big chance that the data is not accurate.
All the conclusions are based on statistical data and it may depend -a lot- what mining pools were giving them the data.
Also the "other" 8.9% is huge and can be anywhere. Even if (ad absurdum) added to Iran's percents can make that country get the 3rd place.

How legit is this data? I know Cambridge is a big deal, and Russia might be big on mining, of course, but it's very suspicious that there's nothing on China. I know about the restrictions and all, but I don't believe mining is simply gone there, just like that. How could they move so quickly? If China bans something, it doesn't mean people stop doing it. For instance, an estimated 1.3 million people (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-country) use Facebook in China, even though it's banned. And China was never a leader with Facebook users, so there must be way more secretly operating miners (percentage-wise).

We should once and for all stop with all the "China is controlling Bitcoin" BS,which was repeated a gazillion times over the last few years.That was a complete BS.
It has been perfectly clear that the Chinese government never really cared about "controlling" Bitcoin.
Crypto mining in China was really small and insignificant,compared to all the other energy consuming industries.
When an energy deficit hit the Chinese economy,the first industry that was banned was crypto mining.
Unfortunately the FUDsters and the conspiracy theorists will begin with the new "Is Russia controlling Bitcoin?" type of BS.Maybe they might ask the same question about the USA or Kazakhstan. ;D

It's one thing to use a VPN to visit a site and a different thing to run a miner.
Let's take for example the smallest one that is still profitable, at 1400W it burns 1000kwh a month, the average per household in China is slightly above 1800kwh a year! How do you plan on hiding this?
Second, there is the noise, this is an s19 pro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4VdrBRZEI8), it's rated at 75db, it's over the noise a vacuum cleaner does, so everyone in the building will know what you're doing.
So you have two problems and if you run this at your business you also need to trust your workers and employees.

And then there is the connection problem, you can hide behind a VPN for a quick peek at some websites but what happens when you need that VPN to be connected 24/7? The GWC is becoming smarter and smarter and will start flagging those IPs.
And this time the government  is serious about it (https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1446423235386494979)

I agree with others who sincerely doubt the data presented, although I wonder what the margin of error is, and can we even claim that the US is now in the first place, and that Kazakhstan has suddenly become so popular for crypto miners?

If we leave all those percentages aside, do you think that it is positive that 2/3 of the miners are positioned in only 3 countries, and more than 1/3 in the US? Also, energy sources in all three countries are pretty dirty (especially in Kazakhstan), so I wonder what we've achieved with mining moving outside China - maybe some US investors are sleeping more peacefully now that they know the evil Chinese won't steal their Bitcoin?

What to say about Russia in the context of Bitcoin, they change their minds on the subject more often than the weather forecast changes in some unstable weather periods - in the morning it is a beautiful sunny day, and then a storm appears that destroys everything in front of it. I just hope that Russia will not become the new China.

They did not control mining farms. They only don't allow mining farms to run ASICs and mine Bitcoin this time.

Mining farms can turn off their ASICs or still run them but they have to do mining operations carefully and don't let governments know about that. I don't now mining farms will accept risk to do illegal mining activities this time or they actually turn off all of their ASICs.

However, Chinese governments can not control the hashrate because miners in China can move their ASICs to other countries
https://cbeci.org/mining_map

For the percentage, highly possible.
I know for a fact that the few companies to release information (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5307087.msg57903975#msg57903975) about their finances in the US had somewhere in June at last 16 exa with a total order of 20 till the end of the year and 70 exa for the next. On top of those numbers add riot and blockstearm which might be the biggest players who are not saying how much they own.
And that is just the big guys, and the ones publishing stuff, we could easily double or triple those numbers, especially since more and more are getting gear.
On top of that, every single company was only mentioning new gear purchases, so again more to add.

I think at this point 30% would be a total understatement.

As for the dirty stuff, when bitcoin was mined in China it was mined with hydropower when China banned mining suddenly everyone said it was done with coal so the ban is good. The same poeple say now that Bitcoin got cleaner because it's mined in the US with renewables, pretty sure if the US bans mining too will say it's good for bitcoins in the US to use only coal and oil.Also, the ban will be good because the US can't centralize bitcoin anymore  ;D

Its important that mining remain decentralized as compared to centralized (means its controlled by few big entities). It doesn't matter whether China or other big countries like or dislike bitcoin mining. Important thing from BTC perspective is that its miners are present in every country of the world.
Though I really doubt that China has zero mining now.

Wut?

There is no "should" or "shouldn't" when it comes to who is on top.  That's ideally decided by market forces and not petty notions of nationalism.  It may be preferable to see governments which are less inclined to embrace authoritarianism showing higher up the charts, but I'm far from convinced that the US is trustworthy in that regard.

Honestly, I was thinking about why Russia hadn't announced it yet. El Salvador announced bitcoin legality in their country, but Russia is still silent. Because we all know that Russia is the world's most advanced country in the cyber world and the technical world. And they have the world's strongest, most powerful and intelligent cyber experts. And this is proof that they can be the first to use any advanced technology in their country. But in this case, I am a little sad that Russia is in a third line to take the green light on bitcoin legality. Since they were the first, I wasn't surprised. Though Russia already had lots of crypto projects, And I am not wrong. The bip/minter blockchain network is a research-based crypto project. Where a large number of Russian crypto currencies are created.It's another wake-up call for those countries that still prohibit it.Now congratulations to all our Russian friends. Now you guys get full freedom to do what we want in our country too.

It makes sense really because Russia is able to draw on lots of energy resources and they have the sort of government that doesn't care about environmental pollution as long as they are getting paid substantially. It's also a relatively simple way for them to raise money while avoiding any sanctions on the country - Bitcoin is in high demand so they're able to sell it off in many places, often undetectable and make a nice income. It would not surprise me to see them slip into the second position soon, especially with a lot of hardware moving out of China since their recent ban, as it is a neighbor of China and that makes it even easier to move across.

Mining activity in Russia is very dense. Especially when the Chinese minners started moving to Russia because they were expelled from China and scattered in several countries including Russia.

Currently Russia is a miner's paradise because they are free to build mining sites without fear of government bans.
But the problem in Russia is the theft of mining equipment which is currently rife. Many mining machines were stolen. This happens because the mining rig machine is very promising for mining bitcoin.

I don't disagree with you about Russia being open to innovation but you need to put the US level of welcoming cryptocurrency mining, Bitcoin, and Blockchain summit before you judge about what will happen in the future. However, the only thing I believe will make the Russian lead the US is if the government change their stance toward cryptocurrency.

Having said that, Canada is the country I expect to be among the top 3 countries in the future but that's if they decide to offer their waste energy for crypto miners.

Well, I would have never guessed that...... Russia have had a real "on" and "off" relationship with Bitcoin over the years... with the different sections in government contradicting each other.  ::)

Vladimir Putin (President of Russia) was very interested in the things that Vitalik Buterin (Canadian-Russian programmer) was doing with Ethereum.... so I guess it is not a big surprise.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-14/putin-defends-cryptocurrencies-amid-global-regulation-push

Yes, in the interview to CNBC Vladimir Putin mentioned cryptocurrency can be used as payment gateway as well as on cross border transaction. In one side the cryptocurrency transactions were into restriction by respective authorities. On the other side a positive statement from Vladimir Putin make the market get pushed forward.

What i like the most in Russia is that despite its intensive activity in the crytpocurrency ecosystem (blockchain business in generl) is that we don't hear too much about the authorities moves with same intensity toward crypto users. As we can conclude, the third place in mining industry is a considerable status, even though we don't know exactly if all who run a mining industry is a Russin entity or just greedy capitalists who enjoy the favorite location for mining without giving to Russia anything from thir earnings (except for taxes that will be paid in local currency RUB) .

This is really interesting statistics. China actually had the most percentage once but they decided to impose a complete ban on the any kind of activities related to cryptocurrency mining. And now, we see it is 0%. Miners in China started to shift their work to other countries in the world. And it looks like Russia has accepted many of these miners.

China placing a ban on Bitcoin mining resulted to Russia been in the third position in mining of Bitcoin. And also, the Russian President Putin, said Bitcoin can be used as a payment method in an interview with CNBC. But, Bitcoin mining can have an effect on the Electricity of Russia. The Irkutsk region in Russia have complained that there is an increase in their Energy consumption by 156% compared to that of last year, and therefore urge miners to pay more for electricity.

Of course this is positive news. Ranking third for Russia is a great achievement as they didn't narrow the crypto space there. I strongly support if Russia will proceed to a level of policy that provides more concessions for Bitcoin in white bear land, but not with Bitcoin bear market 9 that's just a nickname) Lol ;D

Despite of this miners in Russia need to remain on guard, we know that Russia and China are allies so I will not be surprised if in the future they decided to change their mind and then miners needed to relocate themselves once again.

With that being said the controls Russia establishes on their citizens are not as stringent as what we see in China so it is possible an scenario like this is not going to happen for a some time, and if the profits they bring in the form of taxes to the government keep increasing then it is likely the industry could be left to their own devises and it could flourish for a long time.

You totally mixed up everything that could be mixed up, this topic is about Russia being reportedly third in the world when it comes to Bitcoin mining - not about some kind of Bitcoin legality or anything to do with Bitcoin being declared a legal tender like this is the case in El Salvador.

Russia most advanced in what, hacking and amount of crypto scam? What kind of technologies and projects are you talking about?

I think it might be worth having a look at the original data, I think I didn't see in this thread:


https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob9e820357c4824393.png (https://cbeci.org/mining_map)

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/15/blob89c0f9b0e68a7ca2.png (https://cbeci.org/mining_map)

(just click on the images to go to CBECI.org website and have the full picture)

IMO, That data is telling us that Russia is not hostile against Bitcoin, unlike those written in the articles and portrayed Russia as anti-Bitcoin, imagine rank third in a global Bitcoin mining operation that's something to be proud of. unlike China which is very hostile against Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general which is I believe a backward policy, while the US is on top of the ladder that's why Im very confident that cryptocurrency operation in the US will remain safe and sound in the years to come. 

For now, US remain to be more neutral between fiat and bitcoin and there are no serious bans being noted. But they have restrictions when it comes to crypto because the government remains to be pro fiat knowing its centralized. But when we talk of major exchanges and even bitcoin atm machines, US tops it all but the thing that we are mostly looking forward to is the adoption of bitcoin as a payment method wherein there's no signs of granting it. Hopefully, things will be realized in the future as bitcoin has already been adopted in some big countries that have positive outlook on bitcoin.

Finally, China gets 0 (zero) percentage, which looks very different from previously. While US is leading because China has no longer a part of the countries that contribute to Bitcoin mining. What I am thinking now is 'Will China revise the decision of BAN Bitcoin?'. If they plan to revise it, there is a chance for Bitcoin miners to go to China again. Or they will ignore it because of the bad story in China previously.

So China is now at zero in mining? Well, I am believing that next year we are going to see the rate increase in Russia, though that would be depending on how favorable it is for mining companies to work there.One of the major determinants of whether these companies would continue to grow at rate there is electricity; if the payment for electricity is not too much there, then a lot of mining companies would like to setup their mining farms in Russia.

China used to be one of the top choice of miners because of the cheap electricity, but things have changed this time around. It’s not much of a surprise to me that US is on top of this list, because it has been one of those places that has allowed cryptocurrency to keep growing.

After China banned bitcoin mining, the USA became the largest country that mines bitcoin, but I'm sure China is at least in the top 10 bitcoin mining countries because many miners are hiding their business, especially bitcoin mining currently doesn't require special specifications such as factories or farms.

I do not think that China will revise their policy, even if in their country, the mining process became 0. They will stick to their rule and be stricter than before, including crypto approving in their country. Maybe the government does not realize that some miners in their country already move to a friendly country that allows crypto to continue mining. Russia can grow in the future, especially if the government can fully accept crypto because that can give way for their people to make money from crypto.

Since the source of the information is the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), I took a look at what the methodology (see https://cbeci.org/mining_map/methodology) behind the data looks like. Reading the methodology is a bit like reading the fineprint, and there are often surprises in the details.

The data seems like to me to be valid indicators to general pointers of how hashrate is being tied to certain countries, but they themselves describe some areas that make the data essentially dubious to draw solid conclusions from. Namely:

-   They explain that certain hashers tend to obfuscate their IPs my means of VPNs and Proxies. There is no measure on how far this practice is extended and how much it could distort the data, but they don’t see a coherence between the said data and the reality in Germany and Ireland for example.

-   They also mention that there is a certain deal of data extrapolation in their calculous, therefore they are not necessarily data-precise at their root.

-   Additionally, and perhaps the most important factor in my opinion, is that they obtain the data in relation to pools that have a significant hashrate. Namely, they mention (Table 1 in their methodology) data being drawn from BTC.com, Poolin, ViaBTC and Foundry. These represent 34% of the global hashrate on the last reading.

Even though these pools do have their activity distributed over various countries (thus the data were are seeing), the methodology assumes that the country/hash distribution for this 34% of hashrate is going to be correctly extrapolable to the 100%. This is doubtful in my opinion, as there should be at least some evidence that the remaining 66% hasrate (unknown to the study) follows the same geographical patterns.

All in all, I’d see it as pointers, but not a given that the data is correct as displayed.

Except for the native miners in the US, a large number of miners in China also immigrated to the US as a way of exposure to a friendly environment and less restrictive rules for bitcoin, Russia also received a large number of new members in the same way, the US market for bitcoin mining is really growing scary and the future will be a paradise for investors and network developers related to bitcoin. The proportion of miners in China is very low, maybe some underground activities are still in a hidden corner of the country but the Chinese government is very aggressive and maybe soon to censor each locality and mysterious places related to mining

I think it is possible, why not? China can revise it at any time if the government considers it is necessary. As far as I know, China ever revised its policy about crypto previously. So, I think it is not something absolute, or unchangeable. We know that some countries have revised their policies on crypto or Bitcoin because they realize Bitcoin is unavoidable to be adopted. They also consider the demand of society to participate in this industry since it can bring benefits for them.

Although that is possible, that is still questionable as the China government is very strict in controlling their people and not giving a chance for those who have their own will. Hopefully, after they see what is happening to the crypto world and how many countries react to crypto, they will realize that crypto cannot put them in danger. If they can revise their policy and accept crypto like the other country, that will help their people continue what they did before and that can make crypto grow fast in their country.

Cheap electricity served to be a big reason for majority of Bitcoin mining process taking place in China. This has now changed, because long back itself there is unpredictability with the governments decision. As a result long back itself miners from China started to move towards Canada and other friendly nations.

Now this has got moved to Russia, though it hasn't got the cheapest electricity supply there is friendly move from the government. According to the data Russia also got the third biggest mining farm located in Moscow.

China being the competing economy for USA seems to have some plans to be executed. As a beginning to the same it has made such a restriction on cryptocurrency mining.

Greedy capitalists will certainly take advantage of Russian freedom for mining. Miners from China have dominated several countries that allow cryptocurrency mining and of course some of them do not have permits or do not pay taxes for their mining activities.

Russia needs to shut down the miners even though they release the miners, this is to anticipate illegal mining without a permit and of course it is a source of income for Russia as well.

Hmm, nice. It correlates well with that Putin said about being and making the country crypto-friendly. I wonder if this is because of the China ban on mining with miners relocating there or simply Russia nodes being run from around the globe  ???

Either way, this positive approach better be progressing beyond mining and into crypto utilisation...

Are the miners from China already relocated in Russia? Or is it just the Russian citizens only? If they're starting to relocate then there's more than this list, I think.
Occupying the 3rd position in countries who have the most miners is indeed great for the crypto industry and also the Russian president is in the friendly position about bitcoin. This is a good news in the industry as another super-power country adopts bitcoin despite China's banning of all crypto transactions and minings.

Russia seems to be taking the right direction by embracing Bitcoin in every way. They see a great opportunity to collect taxes from Bitcoin transactions, unlike China. Who knows if Chinese mining companies flock to Russia someday due to fierce government restrictions? It's a good thing Bitcoin is decentralized, or else China's mining ban would've put an end to it. There are now several countries expanding Bitcoin mining operations, so it should only be a matter of time before Bitcoin becomes virtually unstoppable. With or without Russia's support, Bitcoin will survive thanks to the way it was designed. Just my thoughts ;D

I highly doubt whether the miners who already moved out of China will go back even if they allow miners to settle down and even if there is any incentives because there needs to be stability in decision making and the amount of money these miners had to spent to move out of the country will be in millions and you cannot expect them to move back.

This is one of the signs that Russia is increasing the use of crypto in his country, and this has been conveyed directly by President Putin that bitcoin has value so this is a sign that it will have a great possibility in Russia that it will eventually legalize bitcoin, and we are also astonished at china banning bitcoin transactions so that they occupy the last position and previously they are a country that strongly supports bitcoin, For now Russia is developing and exploring the use of crypto and later if there is full support from the government then they will rank first on the bitcoin mining chart.

No wonder China rank last in the chart because of its permanent banning on crypto and all its crypto related activities. I even think crypto will be better without China around. As for Russia, its slowly adopting bitcoin and gradually changed their negative views on bitcoin and crypto. And i think Russia will rank up in the chart soon as long as it has cheap electricity that will eventually increase bitcoin mining. And lastly, President Putin itself is now very positive on bitcoin and maybe in the future, bitcoin will also be applied in oil trading which is the President's priority before they come up legalizing bitcoin.

Honestly speaking, when I heard positive news about bitcoin from anywhere, I think my heart, mind, and face started celebrating automatically. And another thing that gives me more joy these days is the positive vibe in our country about bitcoin. It is really nice that some positive vibes are spreading in our country about bitcoin, and it might be very soon before we get official permission to buy and sell. Well, on the day when it comes true, I will give $1000 to my best friend, whom I bet. And my target is under 2023, when bitcoin will be legal and he says no. But this type of postive news can create more postive vibes in my country. And I think it might be possible before 2023. If I win, I have to pay. If he wins, he has to pay me. Cool! Right?

China will be left behind in the dust as other countries adopt Bitcoin for their own benefit. With how everything's been progressing lately, I think Russia will become the next epicenter of Bitcoin mining. It could probably rise all the way towards second place after the United States in this regard. It's a very exciting moment, as Bitcoin continues to take the world by storm. I'm pretty sure other countries will adopt it as legal tender too, as El Salvador's move becomes a widespread success. The more miners are geographically distributed, the more decentralized Bitcoin will be. I see China's Bitcoin "ban" more beneficial than harmful to its existence. Who knows how everything will look like after Bitcoin's next halving event in 2024? Just my thoughts ;D

I am actually not surprised that Russia took the third spot in terms of mining application.

With their geographical location, it is strategic to set-up mining rigs and computers on their areas due to the cool weather. As far as I know also, energy consumption on the area is not that expensive compared to other countries that demand high prices on energy consumption.
If I just had the necessary capital, I would heavily consider mining in that country with all the benefits and strategic location of it.

China will be left out as other countries continue to legalize cryptocurrency, it's really not alarming anymore to see such a stupid decision from the government of China, it also really isn't a big deal that they won't be doing mining anymore since Russia's Bitcoin mining is popping off recently, Russia is a much more fitting country for bitcoin mining to take place, I hope the government of Russia recognizes this.

Even if we suppose that down the line China could change its current policy I have my doubts we are going to see miners moving to China immediately, something that business hate is the constant change of rules, they like stability so they can plan to the future and make projections about their profits and their costs.

But something like this is not possible when the government is changing the rules constantly, so if that were to happen I would expect miners to be reluctant to move there for a few years until they are confident a ban will not happen again anytime soon.

Exactly, although at one point the price of BTC was very low that even the people who had the antminer S9 were about to put them aside for being obsolete, but thanks to the fact that the price rose it did not happen, however due to the restrictions and prohibition in China, in Texas which is a State of the USA, many miners have gone there, no matter that the price of electricity is very high and they are doing things from there, also from El Salvador they want to take advantage of the energy of volcanoes to generate mining, geothermal energy.