Belarus weighs crypto mining as Lukashenko cites U.S. interest in digital reserves

The President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, suggested that the Eastern European country could begin mining digital assets.

“Look at this mining. More and more people are approaching me. If it’s profitable for us, let’s do it. We have excess electricity. Let them produce this cryptocurrency and so on,” Lukashenko told Alexei Kushnarenko, Belarus’s newly appointed energy minister, as reported by local media outlet Belta.

Belarus considers crypto mining amid rising global interest in digital reserves

This President of Belarus suggestion emerges as the U.S. government is studying the possibility of creating a national strategic crypto reserve that could include assets such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP) and Cardano (ADA).

Lukashenko acknowledged the White House’s growing interest in digital assets, stating, “You see the direction the world is taking, especially the largest economy. They announced yesterday that they will maintain a crypto reserve.”

“Therefore, there will be demand for them. Well, maybe we should do it ourselves,” Lukashenko said.

Belarus wouldn’t be the first nation to mine digital assets. The Kingdom of Bhutan, with its abundance of hydropower, already has more than 100 megawatts (MW) of operational bitcoin mining infrastructure and is set to get another 500MW worth of power online. The country currently holds $950 million in Bitcoin, according to Arkham Intelligence. El Salvador on the other hand uses geothermal energy to mine Bitcoin, though in smaller quantities.

Trump pushes crypto strategy forward with first-ever summit 

Even with the Trump administration’s promises and enthusiasm, the industry has been left disappointed by meme coin scandals and a lack of concrete government action—aside from the dismissal of a few SEC cases and the release of a somewhat ambiguous Executive Order on January 23.

That disappointment, however, just got a temporary lift. Two days ago, the White House announced it would hold its first-ever crypto summit this Friday, chaired by White House A.I. & Crypto Czar David Sacks and overseen by Bo Hines, Executive Director of the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets.

Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett reports that the roundtable, scheduled from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm UTC, is expected to include more than 25 participants, including members of the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets. As of Wednesday morning, Terrett reported that 11 crypto executives and two White House representatives had confirmed their attendance. 

However, it seems Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson is not invited to the Summit on Friday, according to a White House source familiar with the guest list. In fact, neither Hoskinson nor any representatives for Cardano have been invited to meet with the president since the inauguration. Many in the community had also taken X posts from Hoskinson in February to mean he would attend a fundraising dinner for pro-crypto PAC MAGA Inc. this past Saturday. 

As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to host the first White House Crypto Summit on March 7, excitement is building within the crypto community. This marks progress toward the Executive Order’s goals of bolstering U.S. leadership in digital assets and financial technology while safeguarding economic freedom.

However, for a president who closely ties stock market performance to his success, the summit’s announcement alone likely fell short. 

That may explain why Trump took it a step further, unveiling the first five tokens set to be included in a future crypto reserve: Bitcoin, Ether, Cardano, Ripple, and Solana.

Trump’s social media posts offer little additional detail on the planned “reserve,” as he referred to it in his Sunday posts. However, the choice of the word “reserve” appears to signal a shift from the administration’s stance in January’s Executive Order.

The term “reserve” suggests that the government will proactively purchase more assets. In contrast, the intention stated in January’s executive order to “evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile” would be more about holding onto the $19.1 billion in crypto, 97.9% of which is in Bitcoin, that it already has from seizures across dozens of tokens.

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