It seems that residents of Svaneti, Georgia, were urged to pledge that they won’t mine cryptocurrency to try and fix the energy shortages they’ve been having due to BTC mining. If you’re familiar with Svaneti’s economy, then you may know that its economy highly relies on tourism spending. According to Macrotrends, the region’s tourism spending rose yearly from 2000 to 2019.
Unfortunately, the region’s tourism nosedived in 2020 due to the global pandemic, and it has only recently started to recover, slowly returning to pre-Covid levels in terms of growth. To try and adjust to the tragic circumstances, hundreds of Georgian residents flocked to crypto mining, which is reportedly the cause of the severe electrical disturbances the region has been experiencing recently.
Local media outlet Sputnik Georgia showcases a video from December 30, 2021, wherein crypto miners crowd a church to make a holy oath to St. George that they will never mine crypto again. Holy oaths like that are seen as unbreakable.
These days, the topic of crypto mining has become a pretty controversial one. Residents have even begun to stage protests in Mestia, while the local electric company, Energo Pro, threatens to increase the surcharges on the electricity.
Because Svaneti is such a mountainous region that benefits from free electricity in some areas, that’s why crypto mining is such an appealing activity. Georgia isn’t the only place to experience this issue, though. It appears that this has become all too common in many regions around the world.
Many Bitcoin miners moved to countries with affordable energy, much to the mortification of residents. The governments of Kosovo and Kazakhstan even decided to ban crypto mining for preservation.
Before 2021 came to a close, the municipality of Mestia released a statement explaining how far crypto mining has come in disrupting their local energy supply. The statement noted that the region’s energy consumption rose by 237% in 2021 alone.
Even Energo Pro said that this massive consumption increase is not sustainable. On January 5, the energy company revealed to local media that the region was already consuming as much as 27 megawatts. This figure is almost four times the amount of power they’re able to handle.
