Japanese financial company SBI Holdings has briefly stopped cryptocurrency mining in Russia over geopolitical uncertainty and the cryptocurrency winter, as reported by Cointelegraph.
According to Cointelegraph, SBI Holdings stopped mining operations in Russia’s cryptocurrency mining region of Siberia over reasons such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and implications over the ongoing bear market, as stated by Bloomberg. Soon after Russia started military invasion of Ukraine, the Japanese brokerage firm ceased its operations. The termination resulted in SBI’s cryptocurrency asset business reporting a pretax loss of 9.7 billion yen ($71 million) in Q2 of 2022. Moreover, the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial backed group recorded a 2.4 billion yen ($17.5 million) in net losses, which reportedly posted first quarterly loss in a decade.
On the basis of Cointelegraph, reports of SBI’s mining suspensions in Siberia correspond with the public mining information of SBI’s cryptocurrency mining subsidiary SBI Crypto. Data from blockchain explorer BTC.com, SBI’s cryptocurrency mining hash rate increased close to 40% from 5,600 petahashes per second (PH/S) in middle of February to 3,300 PH/S. Post closure of some Siberian mining operations, SBI is still involved with some mining operations in Russia. Hideyuki Katsuchi, chief financial officer, SBI, reportedly revealed the company’s desire to sell cryptocurrency mining hardware and withdraw from the country completely. The company claims to not have any other cryptocurrency business in Russia, and intends to keep its Moscow-based commercial banking unit SBI Bank operational. Reportedly, Russia was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency mining countries last year.
Furthermore, Cointelegraph noted that the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on BitRiver, a Russian cryptocurrency data center provider, which was involved in imports of cryptocurrency mining devices from other countries. Certain US mining companies such as Compass Mining sought the liquidation of $30 million in cryptocurrency mining hardware in Siberia, in order to avoid sanctions.
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