"In November 2025, Libyan prosecutors quietly handed down three-year prison sentences to nine people caught running Bitcoin miners inside a steel factory in the coastal city of Zliten. The court ordered their machines seized and the illegally generated profits returned to the state, the latest in a series of high-profile raids that have swept from Benghazi to Misrata and even netted dozens of Chinese nationals operating industrial-scale farms."
"Yet these crackdowns are targeting an industry that, until recently, most outsiders did not even know existed. In 2021, Libya, a country better known for oil exports and rolling blackouts, accounted for around 0.6% of the global Bitcoin hash rate. That put it ahead of every other Arab and African state and even several European economies, according to estimates from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance."
Cheap, heavily subsidized electricity in Libya made even inefficient Bitcoin miners profitable and attracted industrial-scale operations. Mining expanded amid legal and institutional ambiguity and years of fragmented authority since 2011, creating enforcement gaps. By 2021 Libya produced roughly 0.6% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, outpacing other Arab and African states. Authorities now link illegal mining farms to power shortages and have stepped up raids, seizures, prosecutions and criminal cases, including convictions and equipment confiscations. The crackdown has targeted both local operators and foreign nationals running covert mining sites across multiple cities.
Read at Cointelegraph
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