Cryptocurrency’s new frontier

Cryptocurrency mining is booming across parts of the former Soviet Union, with a number of regions expending gigawatts of power on mining operations. Ed Butler visits a facility in Georgia run by a firm called BitFury. We’ll also hear why the breakaway Russian-speaking regions of Abkhazia and Transnistria are getting into ‘bitmining’ and what concerns that is raising for environment and corruption investigators.

(Photo: A cryptocurrency mining centre in Kirishi, Russia, on August 20, 2018. Credit: Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images)