Since March 5, the BTC.com mining pool has suspended the provision of services to new users from Russia. The pool site is unavailable from Russian IP subnets, however, ASIC miners continue to work and payments have not been stopped.
The BTC.com pool warned users about the suspension of services to citizens of the Russian Federation, as it previously blocked users from mainland China. At the same time, access to other BTC.com services is not limited yet.
“Your region is not supported by BTC.com. If you are located or your company is registered in mainland China or Russia, or owned by their citizens or residents, you will be prohibited from accessing and using our services. If you believe you have received this notice in error, you may contact us. Contact us and send relevant materials. If you encounter any issues, please contact us via email [email protected],” the announcement reads.
It should be noted that the citizens of Belarus can still use the services of the service. On the support site of the BTC.com mining pool, a message appeared in “Russian” that the pool had changed its policy regarding Russian users. The spelling of the message has been preserved:
“Dear BTC.com user, BTC.com will temporarily suspend the registration and IP access of new users in Russia from March 5, 2022. Thank you for your kind support of BTC.com! We will always provide you with the best service,” the announcement reads.
Judging by this message, the ban only applies to new users, but this may be a translation error. The change in the pool policy has so far had little effect on Russian miners, who have begun to experience difficulties with authentication and monitoring. However, ASIC miners from Russian addresses continue to work, and the mined BTC regularly comes to wallets. There are no clarifications from the administration of the pool on further policy regarding existing users.
The BTC.com service was launched by the Chinese company Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of ASIC miners. However, after the conflict between the founders of the company and the division of business, BTC.com came under the control of the Hong Kong company BIT Mining. The pool is now the 7th largest hashrate in the Bitcoin network, accounting for about 7.3% of the network’s power.
BTC.com became the first major Bitcoin mining pool to turn off Russian mannerisms, but not the first in the industry as a whole. Recently, the company Bitfly, which owns the Ethermine mining pool, updated the user agreement, according to which the pool stops servicing Russian and Belarusian miners. Last week, Flexpool, a large Ethereum mining pool, announced that it would stop working with users with Russian IP addresses. The EMCD pool refused to block Russian users. Other large pools have not published changes to the maintenance policy.
