Starting August 15, a complete ban on cryptocurrency mining comes into effect in Moscow, the Moscow region, and a number of municipal districts of the Kursk region. This decision fundamentally changes the rules of the game for all market participants, and, as my observations of the industry's development show, the consequences will not be the same for different categories of miners.
Three risk groups: from home farms to operators
The first and most widespread category is home miners. These are those who keep two or three rigs in an apartment, on a balcony, in a garage, or at a dacha. Previously, such activity remained legal if the limit of 6,000 kWh per month was observed. Now, in these regions, it becomes illegal in any volume. It is this segment that is associated with the main conflict with residential infrastructure: old wiring in residential buildings is simply not designed for round-the-clock industrial-scale load, which poses a direct fire hazard.
The second group is officially registered miners, included in the Federal Tax Service registry and paying taxes properly. For them, the new rules mean either an immediate shutdown of equipment or its physical removal outside the prohibited territories. This is no longer just a question of profitability, but a question of business survival.
The third, least obvious but most affected category is mining infrastructure operators. These are sites that hosted client equipment for a fee: so-called "mining hotels," hosting providers, and owners of hangars with connected power capacity. For them, the ban means not a suspension of one line of business, but the complete closure of the entire business in the specified territory.
Context of the tightening: precedents and scale
It is important to understand that this is not an isolated case. Earlier, a complete ban on mining from January 1, 2025 to March 15, 2031 was introduced in ten regions: Dagestan, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, the LNR, the DNR, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. Later, the restriction was extended to the south of the Irkutsk region, most districts of Transbaikalia, and Buryatia. The reason for the harshness of the measures is obvious — a shortage of capacity in the energy system and massive electricity theft. Low household tariffs make illegal mining highly profitable, but distribution networks suffer from overloads and accidents.
Hidden farms: the ingenuity of violators
As the rules tighten, illegal farms are increasingly being disguised. In Dagestan, since the beginning of 2026, specialists from Rosseti North Caucasus have identified 52 illegal sites and seized 968 pieces of equipment, with damage to power grids exceeding 129 million rubles. An episode in the village of Maidanskoye is telling, where a farm of 90 devices with a total capacity of about 315 kW was hidden under a false floor, operating bypassing commercial metering. The ingenuity of violators knows no bounds: near Krasnoyarsk, a farm was disguised as an apiary, and in the Tyumen region, a local resident hid a crypto farm behind beehives. It got to the point that in a forest near Irkutsk, police found 12 devices under a camouflage net, connected directly to a power line pole.
My conclusion: This ban is not a targeted measure, but part of a systemic strategy to combat uncontrolled energy consumption. For legal market players, this is a signal to reconsider the geography of capacity placement and seek regions with more favorable regulation. Home mining in the capital will most likely go deep underground, but the risks for violators are now incomparable to the potential benefit.