Siberia’s bitter winds did not bring BitRiver down. A document from Moscow did.

According to a Monday report by local outlet Kommersant, the Arbitration Court of Sverdlovsk Region has opened supervision proceedings against FoxGroup LLC, which holds 98% of BitRiver’s management company.

The giant that once dominated half of Russia’s mining sector has, in effect, entered its countdown.

Founder Igor Runets was still on the rich list just days ago. Now a Moscow court has effectively confined him at home over alleged large-scale tax evasion.

From freezing assets to taking control of the key figure, the whole sequence has been unusually smooth, more like a precision strike than a routine case.

The freed-up power and mining farms may already have been reserved by higher-level hunters. In Russia, no matter how much computing power you control, it is still no match for “force majeure.”

Creditors at the Door: No Money, No Goods

Calling BitRiver’s current situation “besieged on all sides” almost feels too mild. The first to move was Siberian Infrastructure, a company under En+ Group.

The two sides had signed an equipment supply contract worth more than 700 million rubles, about $9.2 million. The money was paid, but BitRiver’s goods never showed up.

After more than half a year of delays, the goods still had not arrived, and the deposit could not be repaid either. A lawyer who reviewed the relevant materials said this had turned a commercial dispute into a live demonstration of debt dodging.

Behind this bad debt, however, is a signal that the company’s cash chain has snapped completely.

As I understand it, BitRiver still owes several hundred million rubles in electricity bills to major energy players including the Russian power grid and Norilsk Nickel.

In Irkutsk, Buryatia and other former “crypto mining sanctuaries,” BitRiver has already shut down more than half of its mining farms, one after another, because it could not pay its power bills and because of local bans.

It used to be that “electricity was as cheap as water.” Now the company cannot even pay the water bill.

Executives Flee En Masse

When a company is about to collapse, insiders are usually the first to sense the shift in the wind.

According to Kommersant data, by the end of 2025, BitRiver had already lost 80% of its senior management.

Offices were emptied overnight and equipment was rushed out. The atmosphere was strikingly similar to the frenzy on the eve of China’s P2P lending blowups.

One person close to BitRiver’s inner circle even said: “Runets had actually been planning to move assets for a long time. The current bankruptcy looks more like a ‘technical liquidation’: the debts are left inside a shell company, while the core assets have already been quietly changing hands.”

That claim cannot be weighed on a scale, but looking at the current situation, BitRiver is indeed negotiating asset transfers with mysterious buyers.

Put the pieces together, and BitRiver’s calculations are obvious.

Once the old brand is tainted, throw it away. After the assets are cleaned up, put on a new shell and keep doing business.

The so-called bankruptcy liquidation is little more than a grand “escape by shedding the shell” staged for creditors.

The Regulatory Hammer

If debt is the internal crisis, the regulatory hammer is the fatal blow.

CEO Runets was arrested on charges of “concealing assets to evade taxes.”

An old friend who has done business in Moscow for years said privately that this kind of charge is often a “signal flare” there: the state is about to begin a forced “redistribution” of the industry.

Back when BitRiver was able to grow aggressively in a gray zone, even rubbing shoulders with giants such as Gazprom Neft, it relied on blurred boundaries.

But the wind has shifted. Russia is tightening its grip on cryptocurrency, and mining companies no longer have a middle ground. They either submit and become part of the “national team,” or wait to be liquidated and forced off the stage.

BitRiver’s fall effectively marks the end of an era. What is cooling in Siberia’s cold winds is the rough-and-ready age that grew wild on informal methods and cheap electricity.

When Bitcoin is defined by major powers as a “strategic reserve,” private giants that rose through back channels are destined to become targets of the hunt.

When a former pioneer becomes a bankruptcy case on a balance sheet, we should understand this: in any industry that power takes seriously, the so-called dream of “decentralization” ultimately has to bow before the walls of “centralization.”

What BitRiver leaves the market may be nothing more than the remains of a few mining farms slowly cooling in the cold wind.