Published: Feb 03, 2026 at 16:01
In a stunning blow to global Bitcoin hash power, the parent company of BitRiver, once the dominant force in Russian crypto mining, officially entered bankruptcy monitoring on February 2, 2026.
The collapse was punctuated by the dramatic news that the company’s CEO, Igor Runets, has been placed under house arrest. This development marks the end of an era for the mining titan, which struggled to navigate a lethal combination of mounting utility debts and aggressive legal enforcement.
The energy debt trap
The downfall was precipitated by a series of lawsuits from major Russian energy suppliers. BitRiver’s subsidiaries reportedly failed to settle electricity bills totaling over 940 million rubles (approximately $12.2 million).
Despite several attempts to restructure, the Arbitration Court of the Irkutsk Region moved forward with bankruptcy proceedings after finding the company lacked the liquid assets to cover its claims. This financial paralysis led to mass layoffs and a complete operational freeze at several major data centers across Siberia.
Global hashrate implications
The collapse of BitRiver is more than just a corporate failure; it represents a significant reshuffling of the global mining map. At its peak, BitRiver provided the infrastructure for a substantial percentage of the network’s hashrate. With their accounts frozen and leadership detained, a massive volume of mining hardware is expected to hit the secondary market or be seized by state-owned energy firms.
This incident underscores the extreme “counterparty risk” associated with mining operations in jurisdictions where energy costs and political favors can shift overnight, potentially leading to a further migration of hash power back toward the more regulated (though expensive) North American and Middle Eastern markets.
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Source: https://coinidol.com/mining-giant-in-ruin/
