Sovereign Mining: Oman forcibly consolidates licensed Bitcoin miners into a national pool
Oman is taking a decisive step toward centralizing cryptocurrency mining. The country's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, in partnership with Frontier Technologies, has launched a national mining pool that all licensed bitcoin miners within the sultanate are required to join. Enegix Global provided the technological platform and liquidity infrastructure for this project.
This decision fundamentally changes the rules of the game for local operators. Independent mining in Oman effectively ceases to exist — all hash rate and blocks will now be routed through a single state-controlled channel. At first glance, this may seem like a step backward for decentralization, but from the perspective of the national economy and energy efficiency, this approach has a rigid logic.
Scale and Investments
At the initial stage, the national pool is expected to accumulate approximately 10 EH/s of computing power. This is a significant figure that places Oman on par with major regional players. Since 2022, total investments in mining and data centers in the Salalah Free Zone have exceeded $700 million. A key project has been a hydro-cooled mining facility worth $370 million — a technology that significantly reduces operational costs in a hot climate.
My expert opinion: Oman demonstrates that even in the context of global decentralization, small states can effectively consolidate resources to create a competitive advantage. The national pool is not only a control tool but also a way to increase profitability for all participants by reducing payout variability. However, this step sets a precedent that may be perceived by other Gulf countries as a model to emulate. In the long term, this will lead to a fragmentation of global hash rate along national borders, which paradoxically strengthens the Bitcoin network's resilience to individual attacks but weakens its anarchic nature.