Quote from: stompix on Today at 08:14:56 PM

Quote from: bitmover on Today at 07:08:03 PM

This makes absolute no sense, because government cannot really control miners.
A mining pool may be based in Russia, but the hashing power may come from somewhere else.

They will just go after miners, pretty easy to spot the little guys, the average consumption per household in Russia is about 2400Kwh per year, an S17 does that in a month, the big guys are even easier to spot, you just have to go through the record of the electric company, how many types of business do you know who have the same electric consumption 24/7 with no spikes or shut down in it? If they want it, they can find them all in less than a month, and I don't think one ha of solar panel that can be visible from the moon would be a way of hiding your mining operation.

Once identified, they will simply go and ask where do they get their money to pay those bills?
I'm sure that receiving money from a Nigerian prince called Bitfinex LLC each month via a Chinese bank based in the Bahamas will not be a valid excuse.

But, fortunately for us and for the miners in Russia, it's not about the law, it's about the government wanting to enforce those laws, and we all know they are pretty lazy when it comes to this.
One more thing, I would like to see the original of this story and report, google isn't helping me at all with this subject.

All this makes sense. A miner could be identified. But a small miner like the one you are suggestions does not receive coinbase transactions. He receives a share which he gets from the pool.

Goverment would identify him, but couldn't still coerce him to pay everything. He could just commit russia government bitcoin address with a fraction of his hashpower, and there is no way he could be tracked.