Spanish lawmaker sees opportunity amid Kazakhstan’s Bitcoin mining collapse
Deputy for the Spanish Ciudadanos political party María Muñoz has proposed a bill to make Spain a Bitcoin mining hotspot following the internet shutdown that caused a mining outage in Kazakhstan.
The lawyer and economist Muñoz was steadfast in her support of Spain as a Bitcoin (BTC) destination, in a tweet on Friday:
A two-page open letter accompanied the tweet directed at the Spanish Congress of Deputies. First, Muñoz highlighted the significance of the protests and the government’s response which used “all the strength of the police and the army,” before the government switched off the internet to the largest Central Asian economy.
She cited a Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance study that put Kazakhstan as the second-largest Bitcoin miner worldwide, contributing an estimated 20% of the hash rate in the second half of 2021. The government’s decision to effectively pull the rug out from under Kazakhstan’s Bitcoin miners caused the hash rate to plummet a reported 13.4%.
These events inspired pertinent questions for the pro-Bitcoin lawmaker:
A proven proponent for the Bitcoin network, her party Ciudadanos, or “Citizens,” proposed a national strategy on cryptocurrencies in October last year. Her party seeks to position Spain as a pole for investments into cryptocurrencies from the European Union and the world — and Bitcoin mining could be the catalyst.
As Bitcoin hash rate fluctuations have shown time and again, mining infrastructure is not geographically restricted. China’s mining ban, for example, was to the benefit of Kazakhstan and Kosovo.
Alan Konevsky, chief legal officer at PrimeBlock, explained last year's mining changes to Cointelegraph: “Mining companies including those that relocated after the China regulatory
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