Russia's long-dated ban on crypto mining in Moscow, the surrounding Moscow Region and parts of Kursk has moved into enforcement, with bitcoin mining rigs in the capital shut down after Government decree No. 936 was published on July 31. The measure, signed on July 25, imposes a year-round restriction through Dec. 31, 2032 and also bars participation in crypto mining pools. Authorities have not disclosed how many rigs were affected. The move adds to earlier restrictions after Russia legalized registered mining in 2024 and then banned the activity in 10 regions through March 2031 because of electricity demand, with year-round curbs later extended to southern Irkutsk and most areas of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai. Russia accounted for an estimated 175 exahashes per second, or 16.4% of Bitcoin's global computing power, in the first quarter, according to Luxor's Hashrate Index, placing it second behind the U.S., although it remains unclear how much of that capacity was in the newly restricted area. Mining consumes roughly 1 gigawatt in the Moscow power system, while regional data-center capacity could reach 3.6 GW, or 17% of peak demand, by 2032. The restrictions also come as mined bitcoin has been used in international payments after legal changes aimed at countering Western sanctions; legislation passed in July kept Russia's ban on domestic crypto payments while preserving exceptions for foreign-trade settlements and transactions involving mined cryptocurrency, and the U.S. Treasury sanctioned BitRiver and 10 subsidiaries in 2022 over the sector's role in monetizing Russian energy resources.