The United States views income from the crypto mining industry as a potential threat to the efficacy of its sanctions regime, with the Treasury saying that it is committed to ensuring that no asset becomes a mechanism for the Putin regime to offset the impact of sanctions.

Among the companies targeted by U.S. sanctions is BitRiver, which was founded in 2017.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control has singled out 10 Russia-based subsidiaries of BitRiver.

The IMF warns that this kind of monetization of energy resources via crypto mining happens “directly on blockchains and outside the financial system where the sanctions are implemented”.

The organization estimates that the monthly average of all bitcoin mining revenues last year was about $1.4 billion, of which Russian miners could have captured close to 11%.