Bitcoin Roundup: Ethiopian Mining Booms, Russian Investigator Jailed Over BTC Bribe, Fold Files For IPO

Hot headlines in the Bitcoin ecosystem including mining operations proliferating in Ethiopia, the U.S. Supreme Court greenlighting Silk Road BTC sales, a former Russian investigator sentenced to 16 years over a BTC bribe, and Fold filing for an IPO.

Bitcoin miners converge on Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s share of the global Bitcoin mining hashrate appears to be on the rise.

On Oct. 8, Ethan Vera, the co-founder and COO of Luxor, a mining service firm, tweeted that he had toured multiple Bitcoin mines across East Africa alongside industry peers and Ethiopian government officials during a trip to attend the Green African Mining Alliance conference.

“Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) confirmed their support for the industry and said there are 600MW of operational miners,” Vera said. “There are a few hundred more MW ready to be energized this year.”

EEP is Ethiopia’s state-owned electricity producer.

Vera’s post coincided with Kal Kasa of the local Bitcoin mining firm, West Data Group, sharing photos and video appearing to show the construction of a large-scale Bitcoin mining operation located in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

The news follows a February report from Bloomberg claiming that EEP had inked deals with 21 Bitcoin mining firms in the lead-up to April’s Bitcoin halving, which slashed mining rewards by 50% and left many miners scrambling to access cheap electricity to offset the sudden drop in revenue.

Vera posted that Ethiopian miners are predominantly operating “mid-gen” hardware, including Antminer’s S19J Pro and Canaan’s — hardware that has become unprofitable to operate in many jurisdictions.

“Given the low power cost, it's a great place to use this class of machine,” Vera said.

Supreme Court greenlights Silk Road BTC sales

On Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review an appeal concerning the government's ownership of 69,370 BTC ($4.3 billion) seized from Silk Road, the defunct pioneering darknet marketplace. The move paves the way for the U.S. government to sell the BTC.

“The #USgovernment now appears free to sell 69,370 $BTC ($4.33B) confiscated from #SilkRoad Individual X,” tweeted Lookonchain, an on-chain analytics firm, noting that the BTC has remained untouched for four years.

The appeal was filed by Battle Born Investments (BBI), which claimed it purchased rights to the seized Bitcoin through a bankruptcy estate after Silk Road’s collapse in 2013. BBI previously unsuccessfully sought to convince a district court in 2022 and an appeals court in 2023 that it held a claim to the BTC.

In August, the U.S. government raised eyebrows by moving roughly 29,800 BTC on-chain, including 10,000 BTC ($594 million) that was transferred to Coinbase’s institutional custody service, Prime.

In July, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, told an audience at the Bitcoin2024 conference that he would not sell any of the U.S. government’s BTC holdings if re-elected as president.

Russian investigator lands jail time for BTC bribe

On Oct. 8, Marat Tambiyev, a former Russian state investigator, was sentenced to 16 years behind bars for taking a 1,032 BTC ($64.2 million) bribe from an organized crime syndicate.

The prosecution accused Tambiyev of agreeing not to confiscate the group’s ill-gotten Bitcoin in exchange for receiving roughly half of the assets on April 7, 2022. Russian authorities found the BTC stored in a file labeled “Pension” on a computer belonging to Tambiyev in 2023. With Tambiyev earning roughly $144,000 while working as an investigator, authorities determined that Tambiyev must have received the BTC “from sources not provided for by law.”

Tambiyev denied the allegations claiming he was framed, and unsuccessfully sued the Investigative Committee of Russia in 2023.

Fold files for IPO

On Oct. 7, Fold, a financial services firm allowing users to earn cashback rewards in the form of BTC via its debit card, submitted an S-4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as part of preparations to complete an initial public offering (IPO).

The move comes after Fold announced plans to go public by merging with the special purpose acquisition company, FTAC Emerald Acquisition Corp, in July. The move gave Fold an implied pre-money equity valuation of $365 million.

Fold said it accumulated more than 1,000 BTC ($62 million) in its corporate treasury, has facilitated $2 billion in transaction volume, and distributed 45 million worth of rewards to users since launching in 2019.