Kazakhstan's strategic miner rules create 22-day legal gap before enabling law takes effect
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Kazakhstan's strategic miner rules require power plants to sell electricity directly to existing miners from July 29, but Article 19-2 of the electricity law only enters into force on August 20. The 22-day gap prompts crypto market expert Dauren Karashev to warn of a statutory contradiction. Under the new framework, miners receive fixed-tariff direct power in exchange for transferring 10 percent of mined digital currency to the state.
The 22-Day Gap
The new framework obliges power plants to sign direct contracts with strategic miners and sell electricity directly from July 29, but Article 19-2 of the Law on Electric Power Industry comes into force only on August 20. That leaves a 22-day period in which the required transactions have no legal basis. Industry specialists, including Dauren Karashev, question how regulators missed the discrepancy. The mismatch cannot be dismissed as a technical drafting error, according to the report.
Conflicting Rules
Current rules permit miners to buy electricity only from authorized sources, and direct purchase from a power station is not on that list. Miners are treated as wholesale market participants obliged to buy from the single purchaser or via imports. Karashev points out that Law No. 320-VIII, cited as the legal basis, is focused on telecommunications and data centers and does not contain the term 'strategic miner.' Article 19-2 likewise does not set out the full procedure for strategic mining, he says.
What's Next
The enabling Article 19-2 of the electricity law is set to enter into force on August 20, after the July 29 start date for direct sales. It remains unclear whether the government will delay the rules or amend the law to close the 22-day gap, and how the 300 MW quota cited in the framework will be allocated.
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Kazakhstan's strategic miner rules create 22-day legal gap before enabling law takes effect
