How many bitcoins have Russian digital asset miners mined and what is their share of the hashrate?
2025-07-17 13:51
In recent years, Russia has consistently ranked second in the world in Bitcoin mining volume, Sergey Bezdelov, Director of the Industrial Digital Asset Mining Association, told RBC-Crypto. He reported that by the summer of 2025, Russian miners' hashrate would reach 150 EH/s (exahash per second), representing approximately 16.6% of the global hashrate.
The United States holds first place with a hashrate of approximately 323 EH/s (35.8% of global capacity), while China is third with 125 EH/s (13.8%), according to the Industrial Digital Asset Mining Association. Bezdelov emphasized that the primary benchmark for digital asset mining efficiency is hashrate, not electricity consumption.
Russia reached second place back in 2023, when its share reached 16%. According to the expert, by July 2025, this figure had risen to 16.61%, with growth in recent months alone reaching approximately 6%. Russia increased its share of the global hashrate through investment in the industry, government support, and a favorable climate, Bezdelov explained.
He also noted that, since 2023, the introduction of a national registry for digital asset miners and stricter regulation have significantly whitewashed the industry. However, the share of illegal digital asset mining remains high—only about 30% of miners are officially registered, Bezdelov said.
Growth point
By the end of 2024, with a hashrate of 135 EH/s, Russian digital asset miners had mined approximately 36,000 BTC (approximately $4.2 billion at the current exchange rate), according to Anton Gontarev, Commercial Director of Intelion. Meanwhile, the hashrate growth rate in Russia remains above the market average, while infrastructure growth in the US has stabilized.
In addition to the cold climate and the legalization of the industry, the expert cited the launch of own generation and low electricity costs as drivers for the Russian industrial digital asset mining industry. According to him, this makes Russia one of the few countries where digital asset mining remains highly profitable even after the halving and remains a growth hub for the global Bitcoin infrastructure.
"If current dynamics are maintained and new projects are launched, the share of the Russian hashrate could increase to 18–19% by the end of 2025," Gontarev believes.
"The competition is only gaining momentum"
According to Oleg Ogienko, an independent expert on blockchain, energy, and digital assets, in 2024, taking into account the average annual hash rate and the halving that took place in April, Russian digital asset miners could have produced even more cryptocurrency—up to 40,000 bitcoins. The expert says that the dynamics of transaction fees and the changing complexity of the blockchain network should be taken into account.
He also noted that the computing equipment in our country is not as new as in the US. Therefore, according to his calculations, Russia's share of the average Bitcoin hashrate is currently approximately 130 EH/s—effectively 13–14% of the global hashrate.
The total global Bitcoin hashrate is approximately 962 EH/s, and according to CoinShares forecasts, this summer the average hashrate will surpass the 1 Zh/s mark (1 Z/s = 1000 Exahash) and by the beginning of 2027 the figure will double, Ogienko added.
He also added that, in terms of the industry's power consumption, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the current capacity of all Bitcoin miners is estimated at 22 GW, with average annual consumption at 194 GWh.
The Russian digital asset mining consumes approximately 5 GW, according to Vasily Girya, owner and CEO of GIS Mining. The industry, he noted, continues to actively attract large institutional investors and diversified industrial holdings, with demand for digital asset mining-related services and the construction of digital asset mining data centers seeing a threefold increase. The company predicts a 50% modernization of its computing equipment fleet by the end of this year.
"This year, under a moderately optimistic scenario, Russia could mine up to 30,000 bitcoins, including market participants not yet legally regulated. The race for digital resources is only gaining momentum," Girya concluded.
As a reminder, in the first four months of 2024, before the April halving, miners received twice as much Bitcoin—6.25 BTC per mined block of transactions on the blockchain. After the halving, Bitcoin supply and miner rewards were halved. Therefore, even with increased computing power, the current volume of mined cryptocurrency may be lower than a year ago.