Major Bitcoin miner faces bankruptcy as CEO put under house arrest

Bitcoin miners globally are facing expanding challenges to enactment afloat successful their business.

The full Bitcoin-halving gambit and the volatility of crypto arsenic a whole, acknowledgment to geopolitical tensions, are making galore miners determination distant from the concern to thing much sustainable, similar artificial intelligence.

They person the machines, they person the power, truthful wherefore not pivot?

One Bitcoin miner is facing an adjacent bigger trouble, similar a double-edged sword: bankruptcy and enactment turmoil.

Related: What is Bitcoin mining? Explained

A Russian tribunal has placed the genitor institution of BitRiver, the country’s largest Bitcoin mining firm, nether authoritative bankruptcy supervision.

BitRiver was erstwhile a awesome of Russia’s industrial-scale crypto ambitions. At 1 point, it oversaw 15 information centers with a combined capableness of 533 megawatts and controlled implicit 50% of the home Bitcoin mining market, according to HSE Center for Electric Power Research. The institution reported much than 10 cardinal rubles ($131.6 million) successful gross successful 2024, earlier its powerfulness lines began to dim.

On Jan. 27, the Sverdlovsk Regional Arbitration Court initiated monitoring procedures for Fox Group of Companies LLC, which owns 98% of BitRiver Management Company, according to a study by Kommersant.

Infrastructure of Siberia, part of vigor conglomerate En+ Group, filed the bankruptcy petition over a canceled instrumentality proviso deal. The steadfast paid much than 700 cardinal rubles (approx. $9.1 million) successful beforehand for mining hardware that ne'er arrived.

After the declaration was terminated, courts sided with En+ successful April 2025, but enforcement efforts recovered nary recoverable assets, prompting the bankruptcy filing. BitRiver’s accounts were aboriginal frozen, a determination ineligible experts warned could “paralyze operations,” Kommersant reported.

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The En+ quality is conscionable 1 portion of BitRiver’s broader fiscal unraveling. The institution faces mounting energy debts and aggregate lawsuits from vigor suppliers.

Courts are reviewing claims totaling much than 940 cardinal rubles ($12.2 million), including 133 cardinal from En+ Sbyt, 640 cardinal from the Irkutsk Electric Grid Company, and 168.7 cardinal already awarded to NTEK. Regional utilities nether Rosseti person besides filed postulation suits.

BitRiver’s interior operation has deteriorated successful parallel. Layoffs began successful aboriginal 2025, followed by wage delays and enforcement resignations.