Oman's MTCIT launched OmanHash on June 17, 2026, a mandatory state-backed Bitcoin mining pool that all licensed miners must use. The contractor behind it already runs Kazakhstan's government pool. The sovereign mining playbook is now a product being sold to resource-rich states.
Oman's government just mandated that every joule of licensed Bitcoin mining hashrate in the country flows through one pool it controls.
Key takeaways
Oman's Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT) launched OmanHash on June 17, 2026, a mandatory state-backed Bitcoin mining pool that all licensed mining operators in the country are now legally required to use. Every hash mined under an Omani license routes through this single government-supervised pool, with no alternative permitted. For any Bitcoiner who cares about permissionless block construction, that sentence should land hard.
The pool is built and operated by Enegix Global, a vertically integrated digital energy and infrastructure company, in partnership with Omani blockchain firm Frontier Technologies LLC (Frontech). The payout structure is Full Pay-Per-Share (FPPS) with daily payouts triggering at a 0.001 BTC minimum balance, per the Enegix Global press release.
Some early coverage called this a "nationalization." That framing is imprecise and worth correcting. The Omani government has not seized mining hardware or taken equity stakes in private mining companies. Miners still own their ASICs. What MTCIT has done is mandate that all licensed hashrate flow through a single state-supervised pool, giving authorities direct control over block template construction and real-time visibility into every sat of mining revenue. Pool-layer control, not protocol control. The distinction matters for accuracy; it does not make the arrangement less concerning.
Oman's total national hashrate sits at approximately 30 EH/s, roughly 3% of global Bitcoin network hashrate per Hashrate Index Q2 2026 data. OmanHash's Phase 1 target is ~10 EH/s: that is the initial consolidation goal for the mandatory pool, not the country's entire mining footprint. The remaining hashrate is expected to migrate into the pool as the mandate takes full effect.
The infrastructure backing this has been years in the making. Since 2022, more than $700 million has been invested in Bitcoin mining facilities in Oman's Salalah Free Zone, including a $370 million hydro-cooled facility operated by a private licensed operator within the free zone. Licensed operators Exahertz and Green Data City (with Alps Blockchain) were the two anchor facilities launched in 2022 and 2023. All of that hashrate now feeds into OmanHash.
This is not a one-off regulatory experiment. Enegix built btcpool.kz for Kazakhstan in October 2023, described at launch as the world's first government-accredited Bitcoin mining pool integrated with state tax-reporting systems. OmanHash is the second deployment of that exact model. Enegix's combined pool infrastructure now sits at approximately 25 EH/s across 21pool.io, btcpool.kz, and OmanHash, with a stated target of 30 EH/s total.
Olzhas Amirov, Chief Business Development Officer at Enegix Global, was direct about the intent: "This is our second sovereign mandate, and it validates the model we have been building since Kazakhstan." Yersaiyn Nurtoleuov, Enegix's Chief Product Officer, put the ambition plainly: "Our target is 30 EH/s, and we are actively building the infrastructure and partnerships to get there."
A single company is now running state-mandated mining pool infrastructure for two sovereign governments and targeting a third of an exahash under its umbrella. That is not incidental. Enegix is selling a product to governments: hand us the pool layer, we'll handle the infrastructure, the state gets full revenue visibility and block template authority. The Kazakhstan model already "enables direct revenue reporting to tax authorities through an automated system." Oman mirrors it. Miners operating in either country have no opt-out.
The framing from Oman's side is Vision 2040, the country's national diversification strategy. Bitcoin mining is positioned as an on-ramp to broader HPC and AI data center infrastructure. The mining-to-AI pivot logic is real and not unique to Oman. But petrostates running that playbook through a mandatory government pool are doing something different from private operators making the same infrastructure bet. The energy stack and the hashrate stack are both being centralized under state authority simultaneously.
The falsifiable concern here is straightforward. A government-mandated pool with block template authority can filter transactions. It does not need to change Bitcoin's consensus rules to do so. At 10 EH/s, OmanHash alone is large enough to be a meaningful actor in any sustained censorship attempt. Add Kazakhstan's btcpool.kz, and a single contractor's sovereign pool network holds a slice of global hashrate large enough to matter if coordinated with OFAC-style sanctions lists.
The trigger that softens the thesis: if OmanHash demonstrably builds blocks with identical transaction selection to permissionless pools, publishes a public mempool policy explicitly prohibiting sanctioned-address filtering, and Oman's regulatory framework enforces that prohibition, the concern drops from "censorship vehicle" to "revenue surveillance tool." That is still a meaningful centralization concern, but it is a lesser one. No such policy has been published or cited by any source as of this writing.
The broader signal is the replication risk. Resource-rich nations watching Oman's $700M+ infrastructure buildout have a ready-made contractor and a proven template. Each new sovereign mandate routes more global hashrate through government-controlled pool infrastructure. The base protocol does not change. The permissionless character of who gets to build a block does.
The next test is whether a third sovereign mandate materializes. Enegix has publicly stated a 30 EH/s combined target; the gap between its current ~25 EH/s and that ceiling implies at least one more deployment. Watch for any nation-state with stranded gas reserves, existing energy infrastructure, and a national diversification mandate to announce an Enegix partnership. Watch OmanHash's published block data for any detectable divergence from permissionless mempool policy. And watch whether the Kazakhstan model's tax-reporting integration gets replicated in Oman's framework on the public record.
Not by itself, and not at the protocol level. Bitcoin's consensus rules are unchanged. Miners in Oman still own their hardware. But a government-mandated pool holding a significant hashrate slice has block template authority, meaning it decides which transactions get included in the blocks it mines. If that pool filters sanctioned addresses or coordinates with other state pools, the result is censorship without any protocol change. The risk scales with replication, not with Oman's 3% share in isolation.
No. The Omani government has not seized mining equipment or taken ownership stakes in private mining companies. The mandate is at the pool layer: all licensed hashrate must route through OmanHash, giving the state control over block construction and direct visibility into mining revenue. Hardware ownership stays private. The distinction matters, but pool-layer control is still a meaningful centralization of block template authority under a single government entity.
Enegix launched btcpool.kz in October 2023 as the world's first government-accredited Bitcoin mining pool integrated with state tax-reporting systems. Oman is the second country to deploy the same model with the same contractor. Enegix now operates approximately 25 EH/s across its sovereign and commercial pools, with a stated 30 EH/s target. The pattern is a company actively selling a sovereign mining mandate product to governments, not a one-off regulatory arrangement.
