Over 5,500 crypto miners come out of the shadow economy as Russia legalizes sector

Russia’s tax authority has disclosed the number of cryptocurrency miners regularly reporting the digital coins they are producing to the government.

The figure announced includes both mining enterprises, which are required to register with the state, and individuals minting on a non-professional level.

Miners legalize their business in Russia; many others dodge registration

Over 5,500 crypto miners have come out of the shadow economy since Russia legalized their activities more than a year ago, according to the Federal Tax Service (FNS) in Moscow.

Among them are 1,500 companies and sole proprietors as well as 4,000 citizens, who are already declaring the assets they are obtaining to the revenue agency, as required by law.

The tax collecting body noted that under current rules, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs are free to engage in mining once they are added to its register.

For this to happen, they need to fill out and submit an electronic application through a dedicated page, a press release explained on Friday.

Private individuals using less than 6,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity monthly to mine digital currencies are not obliged to register.

However, both categories must report the minted crypto every month through their personal accounts with the FNS.

The authority is drawing attention to a special section on its website where miners and operators of mining infrastructure can find detailed information about the whole process, including how to report the mined cryptocurrency and pay their taxes.

Russia is yet to comprehensively regulate all crypto transactions

With the adoption of two pieces of legislation in August and October 2024, respectively, which went into force later that year, mining became Russia’s first legalized crypto activity.

Many other operations with decentralized digital money, including investments and trading, have yet to be regulated, which the authorities in Moscow intend to do this year.

At the end of December 2025, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) published a new regulatory concept aimed at introducing rules for crypto investment and trading.

The framework, which must be approved by July 1, should also determine the legal status of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the like.

The authority’s plan is to recognize both cryptocurrencies and fiat-pegged stablecoins as “monetary assets,” as previously reported by Cryptopolitan.

Current Russian law makes a distinction between “digital financial assets” (DFAs), such as tokenized real-world assets circulated on private blockchains by government-approved issuers, and regular cryptocurrencies.

Until now, the latter have been treated mainly as property in a growing number of court cases. The Russian parliament just finalized the adoption of amendments to the country’s Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law that confirmed that definition.

The legislation regulating the seizure of digital assets as part of criminal proceedings, which was first passed by the State Duma, was approved by the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, and signed by President Vladimir Putin this week.

Less than a third of Russian miners are registered with the FNS

According to an estimate announced last year, up to two-thirds of active mining businesses are still operating under the radar. To boost registration numbers, some officials have suggested an amnesty.

Russian miners are also required to inform the Federal Tax Service of the type, quantity and specifications of the coin minting devices they are using.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice proposed harsh penalties for miners who fail to register with the FNS, including hefty fines and even prison sentences.

Ending electricity theft by rogue miners has been another major challenge for the federal government and local authorities. Despite an intensifying crackdown, the number of identified and often unregistered mining facilities surged to nearly 197,000 over the past year.

Power shortages have been blamed on both legal and illegal mining farms, with regulators imposing a year-round ban in about a dozen Russian regions, from Siberia and the Far East to the North Caucasus and occupied Eastern Ukraine.