Low-cost energy and Siberian colds allow Oleg Deripaska's plant to provide a worldwide cryptocurrency services to customers.

He's a Russian oligarch and former Rusal president, the world number two in aluminum's field, his estimated assets is about 3.5 billion euros, and is also said to have had KGB contacts in the past.

But how he can do that? In Russia the energy produced by water and cold temperatures are cheap and allowed the biggest aluminum foundry to be transformed into a huge bitcoin mine.  

Bitriver is the largest data center in the former Soviet Union, born a year ago in a building of the Bratsk aluminum plant that during 60s as an industrial USSR model as the largest foundry in all the country. Aluminum fusion and bitcoin mining has in common the need for large amounts of energy. The Bratsk plant use the nearby hydroelectric plant that is the biggest one of the entire Russia powering a supply of 100 megawatts.

The harsh Siberian winters help a lot the natural energy-intensive cooling systems such as data centers, in a few months of activity Bitriver has already conquered customers from all over the world, from China to Japan but also United States, where cryptocurrency mining is often prohibited as in Russia, but they does not carry out its own activities by providing equipment and services for third parties.    

While ago the Russian group En+ Group, which controls Rusal, ended up with the American sanctions against Russian exports. 

The sanctions were cancelled in January 2019, after ten months, following the agreement that led Deripaska himself, which controls 45% of En+, to renounce official duties within the group.