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This week, all eyes are on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and since Vladimir Putin's army invaded Ukraine, a slew of countries have begun to impose and threaten economic penalties. The Russian ruble has been battered by unpredictable markets, with the Russian stock market trembling and UBS cutting Russia's bond market to zero. The European Union imposed economic penalties against Russia, and US President Joe Biden announced that the US will follow suit. Despite the United Kingdom's pleas to the SWIFT payment network to prohibit Russia from using the banking system, the country is still free to do so. Erik Voorhees, the founder of Shapeshift and a crypto supporter, mocked the fact that Russia is still able to use SWIFT.
“Apparently Russia’s actions are so egregious that the West has decided to permit Russia to continue using the SWIFT Network,” Voorhees tweeted.
https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/1496922319725363201?s=20&t=GuH6f9p5V7VeEhX_uvDRKg Furthermore, bitcoin supporters have been debating Russia's hashpower, as the country is said to have the world's third-largest amount of hashrate. This figure is based on data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), which was released in July. Because electricity is so cheap in Russia, a slew of mining activities are based there. Bitcluster, for example, has been operating in Russia since 2017, with over 20,000 mining devices and hosting at $0.062 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Vekus, a bitcoin mining enterprise, uses Gazpromneft, a Russian oil drilling corporation, to mine bitcoin. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at the end of last month that Russia has "competitive advantages" in bitcoin mining. Bitcoin miners are also housed in the Siberian region mining business Compass Mining. On Thursday, Whit Gibbs from Compass Mining explained on Twitter that the company’s facilities in Siberia were “well isolated from any geopolitical unrest.” Gibbs added: https://twitter.com/BitcoinBroski/status/1496883549533659143?s=20&t=XpiTguB-TJpxOmyFyAyypg
“Compass has confirmed with our partners that all miners are safe and will continue running as normal.”
Bitcoin's hashrate has dipped a bit since reaching an all-time high on February 15, 2022, owing to the crisis between Ukraine and Russia. Six-month charts reveal that the hashrate peaked at 249.75 exahash per second (EH/s) on that day, and it's now down 26% to 182 EH/s. While bitcoin miners appear unaffected by the events in Ukraine, the ethereum mining company Flexpool said on Thursday that Russian ethereum miners will be cut off. In terms of ETH hashrate, Flexpool is now the fifth-largest ethereum miner.