A Russian design studio has developed a “beautiful” cryptocurrency mining rig. The fashionable “Freer” is a modular, customizable home mining device. It comes in several colors, displays and sets of ports, depending on the necessities of the client. Meanwhile, members of the Russian crypto community have urged the govt. to classify individual miners as self-employed which might lower their taxes from thirteen to three.

Form Meets Function in the “Freer” Miner

You have to admit, mining rigs aren't the best-looking pieces of engineering. That’s okay once talking concerning industrial-grade hardware; racks upon racks of ASICs in some former industrial plant in Russia, China, or America. However domestic devices, homemade  or purchased, aren't aesthetically pleasing. They're usually simply a skeleton frame, with half a dozen video cards, cables and fans, and, if you're lucky, you’ll get all that in an unpleasant square box with the fans visible on the outside. Whatever the case, it’s not something you'd want to see in your living room.

A Russian design studio has decided to remedy that. They’ve recently launched their first “beautiful” miner, an aesthetically pleasing home mining device that's modular and customizable. It offers a number of ports on the back, a selection of displays on the front showing the mined coins, and it comes in numerous color schemes. The designers have described their creation in a poem published on their web site lauding its curved shapes, extraordinary beauty and discreetly hidden cooling system: “More fashionable than an iPhone, the new geek’s dream.”

The prototype, known as “Freer”, comes as a shell and manufacturers are free to place their own mining hardware within the box. Art Lebedev, the studio run by renowned Russian designer, entrepreneur, and blogger Artemy Lebedev, has not wasted time on the engineering side but has focused primarily on the design aspect of the project. the company didn't reveal details concerning the client who ordered its initial artistic mining rigs but published some of the sketches drawn throughout the development of the ultimate concept.

Form Meets Function in the “Freer” Miner

The fashionable mining rig has been declared at a moment once the Russian crypto community, not least miners, is eagerly awaiting the ultimate decision of authorities in Moscow relating to the legalization and regulation of crypto-related activities similar to cryptocurrency mining. Three bills handling the matter were voted on first reading this spring with their final adoption expected during the fall session of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament.

The new legislation should regulate numerous aspects of the crypto industry as well as the circulation and exchange of cryptocurrencies with rubles and foreign fiat. The taxation of crypto incomes and profits is one of the outstanding problems. Currently, revenues from crypto mining are subject to the Russian flat income tax rate of 13. Different concepts have been mentioned with the newest one coming from the Russian Association of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain (RACIB) and one of its members.

A company known as Crypto Universe as well as RACIB has proposed to finance minister Anton Siluanov to permit private individuals handling mining to register as self-employed persons. This would lower their taxes to only 3-5%. According to Crypto Universe, there are over 350,000 individual miners in the country. Due to the shortage of an adequate regulatory framework, many of them operate unofficially and cash out their minted coins illegally. As a result, the state treasury loses an estimated 2 billion rubles (almost $30 million) in uncollected tax annually.