Kosovo: Haven for Crypto Mining?

Cryptocurrencies have changed the way we do transactions. In fact, nowadays, even institutional investors are looking closely at the potential of the crypto industry. Despite the bearish trends that the industry is having lately, it is undeniable how it has created opportunities for a lot of individuals.

If you will look at Venezuelans, for instance, their own government even explored the possibility of using Petro, which is an oil-backed cryptocurrency. In addition to this, there is also the growing popularity of crypto mining mainly because of the cheap electricity offered by the Maduro administration.

Just like Venezuela, Kosovo is also another poor country that has discovered crypto mining as a great source of income. Considered as one of the poorest countries in the European region with a problem in unemployment, mining digital currencies has become a great alternative considering the cheap electricity that the country offers.

Kosovo as a Mining Hub?

Kosovo has the third-cheapest electricity in Europe. You simply have to pay around 7 euro cents or around 8 cents per kilowatt-hour. To give you a perspective, the average is at around 19 US cents if you are in Britain.

So how much is required in order to mine Bitcoin? With that rate, you only need around $3,000 in order to mine one Bitcoin. And even if Bitcoin’s price is sliding down, this still remains to be a good deal.

There was even a case wherein around $70,500 can already be enough in order to have a mining rig of around 480 GPUs. For someone who has 100 GPUs, he or she can already earn around 2,700 euros monthly. And assume that there’s electricity bill of around 900 euros, it profitable business for someone in Kosovo.

According to Dite Gashi who is the founder of a project that allows contracts to be signed digitally using blockchain technology, “Kosovars like to copy things fast. If one teenager is making money with coins, he will tell all his friends and, before you know it, all of them are mining”.

Cryptocurrency mining is quite popular in the northern part of the country. It is also popular among Serbs who don’t recognize the authority of Kosovo. In fact, Serbs don’t pay for electricity at all which makes it even more profitable.

Declining Price

There are many issues surrounding cryptocurrencies. In fact, it has made the price of cryptocurrencies to slide down. For instance, there’s the claim that there could actually be price manipulation involved in the rise of Bitcoin in 2017. In addition to this, there is also the recent incident of a crypto exchange being hacked in South Korea. All of which has contributed to the recent bearish trends. And if you will ask experts, they are saying that crypto mining could actually become impractical once it gets to around $5,000. This means that mining might actually not be practical considering the cost of electricity and hardware.

There are other countries that also don’t welcome crypto miners. With the amount of energy needed to mine cryptos, it is possible that the cost of electricity in some areas could actually increase if these operations are permitted.