The turmoil in Kazakhstan, however, seems transitory to most miners. According to Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu, miners are not too concerned. Some even have internet access.
Some Kazakhstan miners told us that the internet was temporarily restored on January 7th. In addition, the 4G network of Chinese phones is also intermittently effective. Most expect things to return to normal on Monday.
Moreover, the protests are mostly centered around urban areas, especially near the capital of Almaty. Miners, on the other hand, are mostly in remote areas. There are no reports that any crypto miners were victims of theft of vandalism during the turmoil.
It is unlikely that our mining machines will be evacuated to North America, they said.
The internet outage had a severe effect on Bitcoin’s network hash rate. Some reports suggest that a fifth of Bitcoin’s hash rate dropped due to the outage. This is not surprising, since Kazakhstan is the second-largest crypto mining country in the world, behind the United States.
The drop in the hash rate was likely one of the reasons for Tuesday’s Bitcoin crash. Currently, the largest crypto by market cap is trading below $42,000. Moreover, other major cryptos dropped as well, many posting double-digit losses.
Source:
Crypto Miners Not Leaving Kazakhstan Despite Chaos
