The internet went down this week as the chaos in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country, erupted. bitcoinMining hub is yet another win for miners looking for permanent, stable homes.

China banned all cryptocurrency miners in China less than one-year ago. Some of these people fled to Kazakhstan, where they found refuge. Months after the crypto-migrants set up shop in China, protests against rising fuel prices turned into the worst unrest the country has seen in decadesAll of this leaves crypto-miners in the middle.

Following the sacking of his government, and asking for the assistance of Russian paratroopers to stop the deadly violence, President Kazakh President Kassym Jomart Tokayev instructed the nation’s Telekom provider to close down its internet service. According to Kevin Zhang, founder of Foundry digital currency company, the shutdown put 15% of world’s Bitcoin miners offline. This was after Foundry helped import over $400 million worth of bitcoin mining equipment into North America.

Didar Bekbau from Kazakh was the one who put it that way. “No internet, so no mining.”

BitcoinThe stock market fell to $43,000 on Thursday for the first trade since September, and it was down more than 8%.

The country has now restored internet access, however the whole episode highlights two key facts about bitcoin mining. One, bitcoin’s resilience is so strong that even in the face of large numbers of miner disruptions, it never falters. The U.S. could soon experience a new influx of cryptocurrency miners seeking to prevent future disruptions.

Now the question is whether or not the U.S. has enough room to accept more bitcoin miners, having surpassed China in the role of largest Bitcoin mining hub on the planet in 2021.

Zhang explained that Zhang is concerned about the possibility of congestions and bottlenecks in hosting capacity, which means that there will not be enough space available for plugging machines into.

He stated that there is “a great deal of pressure and demand to host capacity.”

According to The Kazakhstan Mining Market Report, 18.1% of all cryptocurrency mining is done in Kazakhstan, just below the U.S. Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

However, the government isn’t thrilled with its growing crypto mining industry.

Kazakh lawmakers set up new laws to discourage mining over the past months. law This will add additional taxes to crypto miners beginning in 2022. Experts believe the change will have a significant impact on the incentive for Kazakhstanis to invest capital.

Nic Carter, cofounder of Castle Island Ventures, stated that the internet outage follows efforts to ban new mining in the country. Therefore, miners are well-aware of the risk.

Carter said, “These restrictions just reinforce why miners are becoming more located in politically stable jurisdictions.”

CNBC also heard from several mining experts that Kazakhstan had been intended as a stopover for a more extended westward migration.

Alex Brammer from Luxor Mining said that big miners are going to Kazakhstan for short-term work with old equipment.

Brammer stated that “but as the older-generation machines approach their end of service life, these companies will likely use new machines in more stable and efficient, renewable jurisdictions.”

The U.S. has fast become a mecca for crypto miningIt is also home to many of the most affordable sources of energy, some of which are renewable.

Bitcoin’s environmental footprint could benefit from miners moving west if they do.

Carter points out the fact that Kazakh energy use a high amount of carbon. Therefore, much like the Chinese ban on Chinese imports, an extended outage in this Central Asian country could have the result of further decarbonizing Bitcoin mining.

Not all people are convinced there is a imminent exodus of crypto miners from Kazakhstan.

President of the National Association of Blockchain and Data Centers Industry of Kazakhstan is Alan Dorjiyev. The majority of its members are mining companies. CNBC hears Dorjiyev say that he has spoken to the owners of various mining farms in Kazakhstan and that they believe most data centers can be trusted because they are not subject to protests.

Bekbau is also optimistic and tweeted that he hopes to be back next week. “everything will be okay.”

CNBC has heard from industry professionals that miners will make the decision to move out of Central Asia. However, they say that the best takeaway is that bitcoin mining has yet again survived another stress test.

“As we saw with China, when a country demonstrates it’s unstable for mining bitcoin, miners in that country will move elsewhere,” said bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi, who now runs Meow, a company that enables corporate treasury participation in crypto markets.

“This is why the bitcoin network becomes more resilient over time. Miners tend to migrate toward the best jurisdictions which make disruptions more rare.