Belarusian president encourages workers to stay in the country for cryptocurrency mining

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko encouraged workers to stay in the country to mine cryptocurrencies rather than immigrate to Poland or Germany for low-paying agricultural jobs. During a tour of the south of the country, he said there was plenty of electricity and many vacant industrial sites, so they might as well use the electricity to create something, such as cryptocurrency mining.
In March 2018, Belarus passed a presidential decree to promote the legalization of crypto-related business activities, including mining. In April 2019, Lukashenko suggested that a Bitcoin mine could be built at a nuclear power plant in the Grodno region on the Lithuanian border to utilize surplus electricity. Last November, the country's largest banking institution, Belarussian Savings Bank, launched a service that allows users to buy and sell digital currencies using Visa cards. But in March this year, Lukashenko hinted at tightening the regulatory framework to control the use of cryptocurrencies during a meeting with senior government officials. (Bitcoin.com)