The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has drafted a bill to prohibit power industry entities from owning infrastructure used for cryptocurrency mining. This initiative follows a directive from Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and aims to amend the law on the functioning of the electric power industry.
The proposed legislation expands upon existing 2024 regulations that already forbid legal entities and individual entrepreneurs from combining electricity transmission, dispatching, or trading with digital currency mining. The new rules specifically target the services provided by mining infrastructure operators.
Under the draft, companies are prohibited from simultaneously owning assets used for electricity transmission, dispatching, or production and assets used for mining or mining infrastructure services. This restriction applies to entities and their affiliates within the same price zone of the wholesale market.
The bill includes an exemption for entities generating electricity at facilities with a capacity of less than 25 MW. Currently, mining is already restricted in specific regions of Russia, including Moscow, the North Caucasus, and parts of the Irkutsk and Kursk regions, following government mandates introduced in 2024.
