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Giorgi Lomsadze reports on Georgia’s mountainous cryptocurrency problem:
"Just ahead of the new year, residents of Georgia’s remote mountain region of Svaneti gathered in a church to make a solemn oath upon an icon of St. George: that they would not mine cryptocurrency.
“It is unfortunate that we had to resort to this extreme measure, but we have been left with no other option,” one local told RFE/RL following the ceremony. It was a desperate attempt to deal with what has become an intractable problem: chronic energy shortages in Svaneti due to unscrupulous use of power-hungry computers mining cryptocurrency.
A few days earlier, the electricity utility company Energo Pro warned that the situation was “untenable.” Overuse had led to a spate of accidents on transmission lines that feed power to Svaneti, forcing the companies to send crews via helicopter to the high-altitude region, in harsh winter conditions, to fix them."
The area has free electricity, so obviously:
"Svaneti’s cryptocurrency frenzy peaked in 2019, when the power company and police were forced to go door to door to disconnect consumers who had gotten involved in cryptocurrency mining. Energo Pro said it then took offline about five million laris [$1.6 million] worth of mining hardware.
But miners were undeterred, and last year the region’s electricity consumption returned to 2019 levels, the company said. The regional capital of Mestia and nearby towns consume almost four times more power than the seven megawatt hours they are expected to."
Jan 21, 2022, 12:41:20 PM
Posted to Talk at TTI/Vanguard Conference