The decree that Kazakhstan’s President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, signed in July to permit oil producers to run a direct flared fuel to off-grid electrical energy funnel for the nation’s buzzing crypto mining trade has raised a latest existential query about whether or not the extra profitable alternative of the AI compute sector may hijack that infrastructure.
The query turns into pertinent as firms proceed to make the bounce from digital asset mining to AI computing, together with Crusoe, which pioneered the technique Kazakhstan is now exploring, which deserted Bitcoin mining for AI infrastructure in July 2025.
Kazakhstan’s new decree to optimize Bitcoin mining
The decree that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed in July gave the inexperienced mild for oil producers to burn otherwise-flared fuel for off-grid era, which might then be used to generate electrical energy for digital mining, Interfax-Kazakhstan reported.
That extra energy redirection is simply on the desk when these assets will not be wanted for state functions.
The identical decree, put out by the Ministry of Synthetic Intelligence and Digital Growth (MAIDD), additionally proposed carving out an exemption for regulated crypto earnings from private earnings tax, as reported by Cryptopolitan.
The central financial institution and the Astana Worldwide Monetary Centre additionally contributed to the order, which additionally proposed constructing the infrastructure to make use of stablecoins to settle cross-border commerce.
“Our objective is to make Kazakhstan some extent of attraction for international capital and experience whereas guaranteeing most transparency and safety for each participant on this market,” MAIDD Minister Zhaslan Madiyev stated within the announcement.
How Kazakhstan is redirecting stranded fuel to crypto mining
US energy-and-computing agency, Crusoe, constructed its early enterprise on turning waste fuel into income after generations of it turning into flame by way of a course of known as flaring.
Inefficient and liable for roughly 1% of synthetic atmospheric carbon dioxide, flaring was a necessity to get rid of the fuel that oil wells vent into areas that pipelines usually can’t attain.
Crusoe turned the technique into cell information middle websites throughout the North Dakota and Montana shale fields. It additionally labored with producers corresponding to Equinor, Devon Power and Kraken Oil & Fuel, based on the corporate in 2021.
“Bitcoin mining is the perfect purchaser of final resort,” Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller stated, describing the way it got here up with the concept of turning stranded energy into mining.
Nonetheless, by 2025, Crusoe offered its Bitcoin mining and digital flare-mitigation operations to NYDIG, because it totally pivoted to AI infrastructure.
Crusoe’s founders, whose firm now operates a pipeline of greater than 10 gigawatts of AI information middle initiatives, wrote in a 2025 weblog publish: “What began with capturing waste methane within the oilfield to energy Bitcoin mining has developed into discovering new and artistic methods to energy AI information facilities.”
Will Kazakhstan additionally abandon Bitcoin mining for AI?
The items line up extra neatly than the nation could intend. The ministry steering the decree is actually named for synthetic intelligence, the 70/30 rule bundles “information facilities and digital miners” into one class of energy purchaser, and Kazakhstan already ranked among the many high three international locations by Bitcoin mining hash price after China’s 2021 ban, per Cambridge Centre for Different Finance information.
The “70/30” mannequin would enable information facilities and miners to faucet as much as 70% of latest energy capability created by infrastructure upgrades.
The demand facet is actual too. Kazakhstan’s regulated crypto market has grown greater than 30-fold in three years to high $10 billion, Cryptopolitan reported this month, and Binance has picked the nation for a regional settlement hub. Stranded fuel plus interruptible compute plus a authorities courting international capital is the recipe Crusoe rode from mining to AI.
So does Kazakhstan’s mining play grow to be an AI compute playbook? The trustworthy learn is a certified sure.
Notably, nothing within the decree names AI coaching because the objective, and Kazakhstan’s grid has strained beneath miners earlier than. However the infrastructure it’s authorizing, off-grid energy on the wellhead feeding container-scale compute, is strictly the on-ramp that turned one flare-gas Bitcoin operation right into a multi-gigawatt AI builder.
The query is much less whether or not the trail exists than whether or not Astana chooses to stroll it.
