Crypto Frontiers: How Abkhazia Leverages Bitcoin Mining to Navigate Sanctions and Global Isolation

Executive Summary

• Cryptocurrency as survival: Abkhazia leverages cryptocurrency mining to survive economically, despite crushing international sanctions, bans, and lack of recognition. This highlights how de facto territories turn to digital tools to bypass isolation and buy time.

• Shadow economies and sanctions: sanctions have inadvertently empowered black markets, making crypto a vehicle for both economic resilience and geopolitical tools in regions excluded from formal financial systems.

• Russian grip: Moscow’s role is not merely supportive but instrumental - from controlling energy, which enables crypto mining, to using this dependence to tighten its geopolitical hold over the de facto territory - thereby effectively transforming Abkhazian survival into a mechanism of political subordination.