Oman unites miners: national pool mandatory for all licensed companies
Sovereign mining is becoming a reality: Oman has officially launched a national pool for cryptocurrency mining, to which all licensed mining companies in the country must connect. This decision, initiated by Oman's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology together with Frontier Technologies, is changing the rules of the game for local bitcoin miners.
Enegix Global provided the technological platform and liquidity infrastructure for the new pool. In the initial phase, the pool will consolidate about 10 EH/s of computing power. For comparison, this is comparable to the capacity of an average public pool on the global market.
Investment boom in the region
This step is a logical continuation of Oman's large-scale expansion in the mining and data center sector. Since 2022, total investments in this industry in the Salalah Free Zone have exceeded $700 million. A key project has been a hydro-cooled mining facility valued at $370 million. Such facilities demonstrate the state's ambition to create energy-efficient and technologically advanced infrastructure.
Expert opinion: centralization or progress?
On one hand, mandatory connection to the national pool gives Oman direct control over hashrate and cryptocurrency flows, which is convenient for regulators and tax authorities. On the other hand, this could reduce the attractiveness of the jurisdiction for independent miners who value decentralization. However, given the volume of infrastructure investments (over $700 million), Oman is clearly betting on industrial mining under state supervision, rather than anonymous individuals. In my view, over the next two to three years, we will see such national pools become a trend for Gulf countries seeking to monetize their energy resources through bitcoin.