Oman unites legal miners into a single national pool: a strategic step towards centralizing hashrate
Sovereign regulation of mining is reaching a new level: Oman is introducing mandatory integration of all licensed crypto miners into a single national pool. The initiative is implemented by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT) in collaboration with local operator Frontier Technologies. The key technology partner is Enegix Global, which provided the pool platform and liquidity infrastructure.
At the initial stage, the total pool capacity will be around 10 EH/s — comparable to the hashrate of an average public mining fund. This consolidation of computing resources under state control sets a precedent for Gulf countries seeking full transparency in digital asset operations.
Scale of Investment and Infrastructure Boom
Since 2022, total capital investments in mining infrastructure and data centers in the Salalah Free Economic Zone have exceeded $700 million. Of this, $370 million was allocated to the construction of a hydro-cooled facility — one of the largest sites of its kind in the region. This underscores Oman's serious intent to secure a spot in the top 10 countries for bitcoin mining.
Mandatory connection to the national pool addresses several tasks at once: first, it allows authorities to track the origin of each block; second, it creates a unified center for tax and AML control. However, such a move raises questions about decentralization — a fundamental principle of the Bitcoin network.
My expertise: Mandatory joining of a state pool is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it increases institutional investors' trust in legal mining in Oman. On the other, it creates a centralized point of failure, contradicting the philosophy of cryptocurrencies. If other countries follow this example, we may see a fragmentation of hashrate along national borders, which in the long term could weaken the Bitcoin network's resistance to censorship.