The anti-monopoly service of Russia has suggested that Russians minting digital currencies at their homes should pay more for the spent electrical energy. The proposal comes after the submission of a bill tailored to regulate cryptocurrency mining to the Russian parliament.
Authorities in the Russian Federation maintain differentiated electricity tariffs depending on the status and location of consumers, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily explains in an article. Businesses subsidize household prices through their own tariffs, which can be up to two times higher than the rates for the general population.
The FAS now wants to introduce a threshold for electricity consumption, above which higher rates will be imposed. Thus, according to the anti-monopoly service, household needs will be separated from commercial ones. The consumption of various household appliances, including those with increased power usage like air conditioning units, will be accounted for.
Power supply networks in the residential areas of many regions with historically low electricity prices, such as Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Dagestan, have suffered breakdowns due to the spread of improvised crypto mining farms minting coins in basements and garages.
The introduction of differentiated tariffs is expected to reduce interest in mining and other ways of earning at the expense of subsidized household electricity. The agency hopes the new approach can also lower production costs for businesses calculated in the prices of their goods and services, ultimately suppressing inflation.
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