Russia’s Crypto Mining Amnesty: Over 5,500 Underground Miners Emerge Into Legal Light

Shadow to spotlight—Russia just flipped the switch on crypto mining legitimacy, pulling thousands of operations from the economic underground.

The Great Migration

Imagine over 5,500 mining rigs—once humming quietly in basements and remote warehouses—suddenly registering their power draw with the state. That's the scale of the shift. The move doesn't just grant amnesty; it transforms a gray-market computational army into a taxable, regulated industrial sector almost overnight.

Power Play

Legalization is a strategic energy play. Russia's vast, cold regions offer cheap power—a miner's dream. By bringing operations into the fold, the state aims to capture revenue it was missing and gain oversight of a massive energy consumer. It's a classic case of 'if you can't beat 'em, tax 'em,' but with kilowatts and hashrates.

The New Calculus

For miners, the equation changes. Compliance brings costs—taxes, reporting, potential tariffs. But it also unlocks stability: no more raids, legitimate power contracts, and maybe even access to subsidized industrial energy zones. The risk premium just got recalculated.

Global Ripple

Watch this space. Russia controls a significant slice of the global hashrate. Formalizing its mining sector could steady operations, affecting Bitcoin network security and global mining competition. Other energy-rich nations with ambiguous crypto stances are undoubtedly taking notes.

The Bottom Line

This isn't just a regulatory update—it's a geopolitical energy maneuver wrapped in a tech policy. Russia is institutionalizing its crypto mining muscle, betting that controlling the mines is as crucial as controlling the oil wells. For traditional finance skeptics? It's another ledger for the Kremlin to cook the books on—but this one's decentralized by design.

Miners legalize their business in Russia; many others dodge registration

Over 5,500 crypto miners have come out of the shadow economy since Russia legalized their activities more than a year ago, according to the Federal Tax Service (FNS) in Moscow.

Among them are 1,500 companies and sole proprietors as well as 4,000 citizens, who are already declaring the assets they are obtaining to the revenue agency, as required by law.

The tax collecting body noted that under current rules, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs are free to engage in mining once they are added to its register.

For this to happen, they need to fill out and submit an electronic application through a dedicated page, a press release explained on Friday.

Private individuals using less than 6,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity monthly to mine digital currencies are not obliged to register.

However, both categories must report the minted crypto every month through their personal accounts with the FNS.

The authority is drawing attention to a special section on its website where miners and operators of mining infrastructure can find detailed information about the whole process, including how to report the mined cryptocurrency and pay their taxes.

Russia is yet to comprehensively regulate all crypto transactions

With the adoption of two pieces of legislation in August and October 2024, respectively, which went into force later that year, mining became Russia’s first legalized crypto activity.

Many other operations with decentralized digital money, including investments and trading, have yet to be regulated, which the authorities in Moscow intend to do this year.

At the end of December 2025, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) published a new regulatory concept aimed at introducing rules for crypto investment and trading.

The framework, which must be approved by July 1, should also determine the legal status of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like.

The authority’s plan is to recognize both cryptocurrencies and fiat-pegged stablecoins as “monetary assets,” as previously reported by Cryptopolitan.

Current Russian law makes a distinction between “digital financial assets” (DFAs), such as tokenized real-world assets circulated on private blockchains by government-approved issuers, and regular cryptocurrencies.

Until now, the latter have been treated mainly as property in a growing number of court cases. The Russian parliament just finalized the adoption of amendments to the country’s Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law that confirmed that definition.

The legislation regulating the seizure of digital assets as part of criminal proceedings, which was first passed by the State Duma, was approved by the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, and signed by President Vladimir Putin this week.

Less than a third of Russian miners are registered with the FNS

According to an estimate announced last year, up to two-thirds of active mining businesses are still operating under the radar. To boost registration numbers, some officials have suggested an amnesty.

Russian miners are also required to inform the Federal Tax Service of the type, quantity and specifications of the coin minting devices they are using.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice proposed harsh penalties for miners who fail to register with the FNS, including hefty fines and even prison sentences.

Ending electricity theft by rogue miners has been another major challenge for the federal government and local authorities. Despite an intensifying crackdown, the number of identified and often unregistered mining facilities surged to nearly 197,000 over the past year.

Power shortages have been blamed on both legal and illegal mining farms, with regulators imposing a year-round ban in about a dozen Russian regions, from Siberia and the Far East to the North Caucasus and occupied Eastern Ukraine.

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