The Sultanate of Oman has launched a new cryptocurrency mining center, the second mining facility to open in the country in the past 10 months.

According to a local publication, the Oman Daily Observer, a data hosting and cryptocurrency mining center, was opened in the Salalah Free Zone, which is a special economic zone in the country with low corporate taxes. A local company, Exahertz, will run the center in cooperation with Dubai-headquartered blockchain company Moonwalk Systems.

The center reportedly cost 135 million Omani rials (roughly $350 million) to construct, and it will use the latest hardware from Bitmain Technologies, with plans to set up 15,000 machines by October 2023. Currently, it operates in a pilot regime with 2,000 machines online, working from 11 megawatts of consumed power, according to the report.

The mining facility comes as part of a plan to accelerate the digitalization of Oman’s economy, mainly dependent on oil export. Another mining center opened in November 2022 with 150 million Omani Reals ($389 million) of investment. In 2022, the electricity prices for business operators in the country stood at RO 0.064 ($0.166) per kWh.

The government of Oman launched the consultation paper on a national crypto framework in the summer of 2023. The framework might require virtual asset providers to establish a local office in Oman. It could also oblige them to hold a smaller fraction of assets in hot wallets, conduct audits of safeguarded assets and show proof of reserves.

Cointelegraph reached out to the Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information technology of Oman and to the Administration of Economic Zones but didn't receive an immediate response. 

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