Sweden's Energy Minister Dismisses Usage Of Electricity For Bitcoin Mining

Sweden's Energy Minister Khashayar Farmanbar is in not in favor of the allocation of electricity to Bitcoin mining and believes that the same energy can be provided to job-generating projects such as steel plants.

Sweden comes in Europe’s top three Bitcoin mining sectors and is emerging as a leading mining hub globally. The rising electricity consumption of miners has attracted the attention of Farmanbar who has hinted that Sweden might not be very hospitable to Bitcoin mining firms, Bloomberg reported Sunday.

“We need energy for more useful things than Bitcoin, to be honest,” Farmanbar said in an interview. “We are moving from a period of administration to an extreme expansion where our entire manufacturing industry is seeking to electrify.”

The concerns regarding the consumption of electricity by miners are rising as last month the government asked the Swedish Energy Agency, a government agency for national energy policy issues, to investigate ways using which the energy consumed by miners can be tracked.

There has been a surge in Bitcoin mining since the boom of the crypto sector in 2021 and the energy consumption by the process has led to the President of Kazakhstan signing a bill to impose higher tax rates on miners.

Interestingly, Glassnode data from June end suggests that miners held 65,200 BTC at that time and are distributing 3,000-4,000 Bitcoins per month. The regulatory pressure from governments might be a reason why miners are cashing out their tokens.