THE MINING POD: The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin Mining in Kazakhstan w/ Didar Bekbau
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kazakhstan was once the second largest bitcoin mining hub in the world, but now it’s a shadow of its former self.
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Welcome back to The Mining Pod! Today, Didar Bekbau, CEO of Xive, joins us to analyze Kazakhstan's Bitcoin mining industry. Following China's 2021 mining ban, Kazakhstan briefly captured 15-18% of global hashrate, making it the second largest mining hub in the world, before government restrictions devastated the sector. Didar explains how aging Soviet-era infrastructure couldn't handle the surge, triggering a power price tax hike that drove miners to Russia and the US. He also explores whether Kazakhstan's energy-rich landscape might someday welcome miners back with proper planning and infrastructure investment.
# Notes:
- Kazakhstan peaked at 18% of global hash rate (2021)
- Mining capacity dropped from 1600MW to ~200-400MW
- Electricity tax reached $0.05-0.06 per kWh
- Russia became primary destination for fleeing miners
- Many miners relocated equipment to US and Russia
- Grid infrastructure dated from 1960s-1980s Soviet era
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
02:02 Current Kazakhstan mining overview
04:19 Scope of hashrate
06:14 Why declining hashrate?
08:49 Tax structure
11:58 Reverting the tax structure
13:42 Effects of China mining ban
14:51 Where power generators mining?
17:14 Supply & demand imbalance
21:05 Future for mining in Kazakhstan?
23:59 GDM owning generation
25:07 Russia mining
27:34 Off grid mining in Kazakhstan
29:55 Ukraine war and natural gas
31:52 GDA, grid demand & government
33:12 Kazakhstan mining outlook
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's up y'all? Welcome back to the mining pod. For this week's show, we welcome Didar Bekbao, |
| 0:05.8 | the CEO of Zyve, to talk about the rise and fall of Bitcoin mining in Kazakhstan. |
| 0:10.7 | Now, following the China mining ban in 2021, a lot of Chinese miners migrated to Kazakhstan |
| 0:16.0 | to make use of cheap power from its abundance of coal and natural gas. The country peaked at maybe about |
| 0:23.1 | 18% of total global hash rate in October 2021 and has been downhill since. D-DAR covers why that is |
| 0:30.7 | the tariff that was placed on electricity for Bitcoin miners in the country that has played a part |
| 0:36.6 | in that, where the miners |
| 0:38.0 | have gone, and what, if any, opportunity still exists for Bitcoin miners and Kazakhstan? |
| 0:43.5 | Hope you all enjoy this one. D-Dar is a wealth of information on the topic. |
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| 1:16.9 | Didar Beckbao, welcome to the mining pod, man. How you doing? |
| 1:20.2 | Hey, Colin. Thank you for inviting me. I'm doing well. How about you? |
| 1:25.2 | Doing great, man. It's been a busy week for news. |
| 1:30.5 | All of the tariff stuff floating around has provided endless fodder for discussion. |
| 1:36.7 | But we won't be talking about tariffs today. |
| 1:38.8 | We'll spare our listeners and you that torture. |
... |
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