Presentation short abstract

This presentation presents results from my PhD on the geopolitics of crypto-mining in post-Soviet states, focusing on Kyrgyzstan. It shows how political actors divert scarce hydroelectric power for digital mining, generating value, opacity, local tensions and regional geopolitical frictions.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation will summarize the main results of my PhD thesis about the geopolitics of cryptocurrencies mining in post-soviet countries (Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), focusing on the Kyrgyzstan’s case. Energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining has been developed on significant energy surpluses in Russia and Kazakhstan, through local networks of actors who have privatized, or “captured,” the electricity generation infrastructures inherited from the Soviet era after the fall of the USSR. While digital mining has emerged as an alternative and opaque activity, its industrial-scale development has led the Russian authorities to integrate crypto mining into a strategic discourse of circumventing sanctions and ensuring the resilience of the national economy in times of war, while the Kazakhstani authorities have heavily regulated the activity, which they accuse of exacerbating the energy crisis the country experienced in 2021/2022. In Kyrgyzstan, a country with much lower electricity capacity, cryptocurrencies mining farms have been connected to public power plants with the direct involvement of government’s members. In this former Soviet republic, nearly 90% of the country's electricity is produced by hydroelectric dams, whose water resources are dwindling due to climate change have to be shared with other countries downstream, causing significant geopolitical tensions. After several fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan between 2022 and 2024, completed with OSInt investigations, the geopolitical methodology allows to understand how local authorities’ members are using their political power to divert electricity, while the population suffers significant restrictions due to its scarcity, in order to allow a minority of actors to extract value by mining cryptocurrencies.