Kosovo Renews Crypto Mining Ban Amid Rising Energy Prices – Mining Bitcoin News

Kosovo’s government adopted measures designed to preserve energy supply over the next months. These include an end to cryptocurrency mining. This comes as a result of a dramatic increase in import prices. The restrictions could be extended up to six more months.

Kosovo authorities reinstate the ban on cryptocurrency mining

Kosovo’s executive authority has approved steps that will ensure adequate energy supplies to homes and businesses for the next few weeks and months. The government of Pristina has published the relevant decree, according to Tass news agency.

The measures adopted by the cabinet of ministers include helping households to meet their heating needs, supporting the nation’s grid operator to guarantee the security of electricity distribution as well as efforts to reduce consumption by all institutions.

Also, it is listed as necessary that the electrical energy used for producing digital currency be prohibited. Last winter was when power shortages in Southeast Europe meant that the industrial activity of power-hungry people was stopped.

The government explained it’s introducing the “emergency measures” in connection with the current global energy situation, namely the steeply rising rates at which Kosovo is importing its energy and a possible ban on the export of fossil materials from some European countries. This could lead to a higher price.

Kosovo’s authorities made it clear that they are not just trying to provide enough energy for winter, but to also protect the public interests. Although the measures including the ban on the mining were in effect for a period of two month, the ministers have the power to prolong them by majority vote for up to 180 day.

The government not only suspended cryptocurrency mining but also took out illegal miners in raids that saw the seizure of hardware and hundreds of coins from underground crypto-farms.

The crackdown threatened to raise ethnic tensions in the small country as the Albanian-led central government targeted regions with a predominantly Serb population in the north where consumers have been refusing to pay their electricity bills for more than two decades as they don’t recognize the authority of Pristina.

Are you optimistic that Kosovo will extend crypto mining prohibition to six months? Comment below to share your views.

Lubomir Tatsev

Lubomir Tassev is a journalist from tech-savvy Eastern Europe who likes Hitchens’s quote: “Being a writer is what I am, rather than what I do.” Besides crypto, blockchain and fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.