- Authorities of the Republic of Kosovo seized 272 equipment used for crypto mining.
- These equipment were seized during a series of raids carried out to reduce crypto mining activities in their territory due to the lack of electricity.
- The energy consumption per month of these mining devices is comparable to the energy used by 500 homes.
Authorities of the Republic of Kosovo, a country located on the Balkan Peninsula, in southeastern Europe, seized hundreds of devices used for mining crypto assets, an action that is part of the measures established by the government of said nation, with the aim of reduce crypto mining activities in its territory due to the lack of electricity.
Regarding the search, the Kosovo police indicated through an official statement that with the raids, they managed to seize 272 teams which were used to carry out the activity of mining crypto assets in the municipality of Leposavic, this was announced by the AFP news agency.
For his part, Xhelal Svecla, current Minister of the Interior, said through a publication on the social network Facebook, that the entire search was carried out and ended without any incident to report.
Crypto mining and high energy costs
Likewise, Hekuran Murati, current Minister of Finance, similarly made use of the platform created by Mark Zuckerberg to indicate that, andl energy consumption per month of these mining devices is comparable to the energy used by 500 homes, which is estimated at 60 thousand ($ 1,385,663 pesos approximately) and 120 thousand euros ($ 2,772,642 pesos approximately).
Due to the high energy costs that this activity represents, the Minister of Finance added that the illicit enrichment of a handful of people at the expense of taxpayers is not permissible.
Measure in the face of power shortage
Actions to stop mined of crypto assets began on January 4, when the government of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, decided to stop all operations related to mining, as a measure to reduce the growing energy shortage in its territory, in the cold winter months, season in which the demand for this service increases in several homes in the nation.
It is so The new raid to seize mining devices brought the total number of seized platforms to 342 since these types of activities began just a couple of days ago.
Repression of crypto mining, could increase ethnic tensions
It should be noted that this government measure may have other repercussions, in addition to the displeasure of all the miners who recently ceased their activities, staining themselves with certain political overtones, because electricity does not only affect miners.
In fact, with the power outage, tensions have begun to grow between the Kosovo government, which is dominated by ethnic Albanians, and ethnic Serbs, who make up a good majority within four municipalities in the north of the country.
The problem lies mainly in the fact that the Serbs do not recognize the authority or the Pristina regime, in addition to that they have not paid for this service in more than 20 years, basically, since the Kosovo war of 1998-1999.
The answer to how this group of people continues to enjoy electricity service without paying a penny, is that the country’s public service company is the one that has been in charge of covering their taxes in this area, with their own income and, according to estimates released by various local media, the total bill to pay is 12 million euros per year.
Therefore, when presenting the current energy problem in the nation, which has been accentuated by the local generation of deficient energy coupled with the growth of import prices, everything was directed to put the energy issue on the table.
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