Cheap Power Turns Libya into a Hidden Bitcoin Mining Hub, Sparking Crackdowns
Libya’s heavily subsidized, extremely low electricity costs have fuelled a clandestine Bitcoin mining boom that strained the country’s fragile grid and prompted escalating enforcement. At its peak around 2021–2025, estimates put Libya’s contribution at roughly 0.6% of global Bitcoin hashrate, consuming about 0.855 TWh annually (~2% of national generation). Reported retail power rates as low as $0.004/kWh made even older, inefficient ASICs profitable, attracting domestic operators and foreign actors who smuggled or imported second‑hand rigs despite a 2022 ban on mining-equipment imports. Mining spread across abandoned factories, warehouses and homes, often hidden in industrial zones with measures to mask heat signatures. Authorities have staged major raids in Benghazi, Misrata and Zliten, seizing tens of thousands of devices and prosecuting operators — culminating in 2025 convictions that gave three‑year jail terms to nine people. Legal ambiguity remains: a 2018 central bank warning targeted virtual-currency use, but no law explicitly criminalizes mining; prosecutions rely on illegal power use, smuggling and money‑laundering charges. Policymakers are split between proposals to license, meter and tax mining to capture revenue and jobs, and calls for stricter bans to curb theft, AML risks and grid instability. For crypto traders, the case highlights how subsidized-energy mining in fragile states can quickly shift global hashrate distribution, create sudden enforcement risk, and produce intermittent increases in used-rig supply from seizures — all factors that can cause short-term hashrate volatility, miner profitability swings and potential sell pressure on seized or repatriated equipment.
Neutral
The news is neutral for Bitcoin price because it documents a regional shift in mining economics and enforcement risks rather than a direct demand or protocol-level change. Short-term effects: raids and large seizures can temporarily reduce localized hashrate and push short-term volatility in global hashrate, which may affect miner revenue expectations and create transient sell pressure if seized or repatriated rigs enter secondary markets. That can marginally pressure miner sentiment, but these are typically localized disruptions and do not materially change Bitcoin’s monetary fundamentals or broad demand. Long-term effects: persistent enforcement or a formal licensing-and-tax regime could reallocate global mining activity and alter miner cost curves; a move to license and tax might reduce illicit supply channels and stabilize operations, while stricter crackdowns could shift hashrate to other low-cost jurisdictions. Overall, these developments influence miner profitability, regional hashrate distribution and hardware second‑hand markets — factors that affect miner behavior and network metrics but are unlikely to be a direct bullish or bearish driver for BTC price by themselves.