Residents of Svaneti, Georgia, have reportedly been made to pledge a holy oath they will not mine cryptocurrency in order to deal with energy shortages blamed on Bitcoin mining.
The economy of the northwest Svaneti region of Georgia depends on tourism spending, which rose every year from 2000 to 2019 according to Macrotrends. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, tourism plummeted in 2020 and has only recently begun to return to pre-Covid levels of growth.