Kazakhstan to introduce new energy fees for crypto miners in 2022

With Kazakhstan growing in popularity for mining cryptocurrencies, the country’s president signed a new law introducing an additional fee for crypto miners.

The President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, recently signed a new law that provides for an additional tax on the energy consumption of cryptocurrency miners working in the country. The new fees will apply from January 2022.

According to local news agency Kursiv, the new law introduces an additional fee of 1 Kazakhstani tenge ($ 0.00233) per kilowatt-hour used by cryptocurrency miners.

The additional tax is part of a series of legislative changes to the national tax code related to cryptocurrency miners. The Kazakh parliament passed the law in mid-June.

Albert Rau, chairman of the regional development and economic reform committee, said the main purpose of the new law is to regulate and “get out of the shadows” of the cryptocurrency mining industry. Rau is the former First Deputy Minister for Investment and Development of Kazakhstan and is considered to be the author of the new legislative initiative.

Kazakhstan has recently become a major destination for cryptocurrency mining operations. According to data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, Kazakhstan is the fourth largest country in the world after China, the United States, and Russia in terms of total bitcoin hash rate.

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As Cointelegraph previously reported, Chinese crypto mining giants like Canaan have moved their operations to Kazakhstan while Chinese authorities crack down on crypto mining. The large Chinese mining pool BTC.com also successfully relocated some of its miners to Kazakhstan at the end of June.