How Bitcoin mining quietly became FX infrastructure for Russia and Paraguay

Russia’s central bank just said the quiet part out loud: Bitcoin mining is now one of the factors supporting the ruble.

At a December press conference, Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina acknowledged that regulated mining – legalised in 2024 – is “one of the additional factors” behind the currency’s recent strength. She stressed that much of the activity is still in the grey economy and hard to measure, but the direction is clear: hashpower is now part of Russia’s balance-of-payments story.

A senior Kremlin official was even more blunt. Presidential aide Maxim Oreshkin recently called mining Russia’s “undervalued new export,” arguing that crypto flows should be treated like any other foreign-exchange earner when you’re trying to understand the ruble. In his view, ignoring mining leads to bad FX forecasts.

For a country under heavy financial sanctions, that framing matters. If you can’t easily route dollar or euro flows through the usual banking pipes, turning cheap domestic energy into globally-liquid Bitcoin is a way to re-open an external funding channel – without asking anyone’s permission.

Mining as “shadow export”

Russia’s formal line is still that Bitcoin is not legal tender and can’t be used for domestic payments. But once the central bank admits mining is a FX driver, the narrative shifts: hash becomes an export industry.

The mechanics are simple:

• Miners consume domestically-priced energy.
• They receive BTC, which can be sold abroad for dollars, euros, or yuan.
• Those FX flows can be used – directly or indirectly – to pay for imports or service external obligations.

Nabiullina is careful to say mining didn’t suddenly appear this year and isn’t the only explanation for the ruble’s move. But if it’s one of the levers, you can expect Moscow to pull it harder – and to crack down on unregistered farms that sit outside the new legal regime.

For operators, that means Russia is drifting toward a world where:

• Registered miners become quasi-exporters with political cover.
• Unregistered miners become easy targets in the next “illegal activity” campaign.
• Energy policy and FX policy get quietly tied together via hash.

Paraguay: from selling electrons to selling hash

On the other side of the world, Paraguay is walking a similar path from a very different starting point.

The country has long exported surplus hydro power to its neighbours, especially Brazil and Argentina. Those contracts have not always been reliable; Paraguay’s utility is currently owed hundreds of millions of dollars by Argentina on past electricity sales, according to Hive Digital’s executive chairman Frank Holmes.

Bitcoin miners offer something simpler: they show up, build substations, and pay the utility every month.

Hive reports it has grown daily production in Paraguay from roughly three BTC to around ten BTC per day and plans further expansion, all powered by low-cost hydro. Management describes Bitcoin mining and high-performance computing (HPC) data centres as “twin engines”: mine BTC to bootstrap cash flow, then reinvest into higher-margin compute.

From Asunción’s point of view, that’s a neat trade:

• Surplus electrons that used to be sold cheaply – or not at all – now get monetised on site.
• Utilities gain paying industrial customers who invest their own capital in grid infrastructure.
• Bitcoin miners effectively convert Paraguayan hydro into a liquid global asset that can be sold anywhere.

It’s still energy export – just in the form of hash instead of cross-border transmission.

Why this matters for Bitcoin’s political economy

These two examples – Russia and Paraguay – sit at very different points on the geopolitical map. One is a sanctioned petro-state with a war economy. The other is a small hydro-rich democracy trying to monetise surplus power and attract data-centre investment.

The common thread is that both are starting to treat Bitcoin mining as:

• An export channel – turning domestic energy into an external asset.
• An FX stabiliser – by generating hard-currency flows for the country or its corporates.
• Infrastructure – miners build substations, grid connections, and data-centre shells that can later be repurposed for non-mining compute.

That’s a very different political story from “degenerate yield farming” or “speculative gambling”. It’s closer to LNG trains and aluminium smelters – capex-heavy energy monetisation infrastructure – except the product is digital, censorship-resistant, and globally fungible.

The risks: grey zones, volatility and capture

None of this comes for free.

In Russia, the central bank is clear that large parts of the sector are still opaque. Hash flows can slip around capital controls and sanctions in ways that are hard to measure. That’s exactly why the Kremlin likes it – and why regulators will eventually want tighter control.

In Paraguay, critics worry about:

• Over-dependence on a single industry with brutal halving cycles.
• Political capture if miners become dominant industrial lobbies.
• Environmental and grid-planning externalities if policy gets written by whoever promises the most substations.

For miners and investors, the volatility cuts both ways. At $120k BTC, everyone loves “hidden exports.” At $60k, treasuries and utilities will start revisiting their risk models.

Takeaways for operators

If you’re a serious Bitcoiner – miner, infra builder, FX desk, or policy person – the signal here is:

• Mining is becoming foreign-policy infrastructure. Central banks and energy ministries are starting to talk about it that way, even if carefully.
• Host countries will increasingly treat miners like exporters. That can mean incentives and stable contracts, but also registration, reporting, and political risks.
• The narrative is shifting from “waste” to “FX + grid tool”. That’s a much stronger footing than pure speculation – and it’s where Bitcoin wants to live if it’s going to be taken seriously for the next few decades.

The details will look different in Moscow, Asunción, Texas or Bhutan. But the new pattern is clear: whoever controls cheap power and can stomach volatility is now in the business of exporting hash – and, by extension, importing influence.