Oman has launched a new cryptocurrency mining centre, the second mining facility to open in the country in the past 10 months.
According to a local publication, the Oman Daily Observer, a data hosting and cryptocurrency mining centre, was opened in the Salalah Free Zone, which is a special economic zone in the country with low corporate taxes. A local company, Exahertz, will run the centre in cooperation with Dubai-headquartered blockchain company Moonwalk Systems.
The centre reportedly cost 135 million Omani rials (roughly $350 million) to construct, and it will use the latest hardware from Bitmain Technologies, with plans to set up 15,000 machines by October 2023. Currently, it operates in a pilot regime with 2,000 machines online, working from 11 megawatts of consumed power, according to the report.
The mining facility comes as part of a plan to accelerate the digitalization of Oman’s economy, which is mainly dependent on oil exports. Another mining centre opened in November 2022, costing 150 million Omani rials ($389 million). In 2022, the electricity prices for business operators in the country stood at 0.064 rials ($0.166) per kilowatt hour.
On July 27, the government of Oman launched a consultation paper on a national crypto framework. The framework might require digital asset providers to establish a local office in Oman. It could also oblige them to hold a smaller fraction of assets in hot wallets, conduct audits of safeguarded assets and show proof of reserves.
