According to a recent report released last Sunday by the local news agency Tasnim News Agency, some 45.000 Bitcoin mining machines were confiscated by Iranian police for illegally using state-subsidized electricity. The machines were mainly of the ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) type.
On Saturday, Mohammad Hassan Motavalizadeh, the head of Tavanir, the Iranian state-owned electricity company, explained that the Bitcoin miners were paying a state-subsidized and therefore very low price for electricity, and that their machines had consumed at a speed. of 95 MWh (megawatts per hour).
Furthermore, he also said that changes to street lighting systems in cities like Tehran saved the country another 45 MWh of electricity. Motavalizadeh said: "The total reduced consumption corresponds to the use [of electricity] for a city with a population of over half a million inhabitants."
Iran's fight against the demand for electricity
There is currently over 40.000 MWh of electricity demand for the country, which Iran is trying to meet, as natural gas consumption is rapidly increasing - caused by a cold spell and lockdown regulations. imposed by the government to fight the pandemic - which makes it difficult to supply power plants with enough fuel.
Iran is already trying to avoid numerous electricity blackouts in its major cities through the temporary closure of farms authorized for the legal mining of Bitcoin, which authorities estimate to have a total consumption of 60.000 MWh.
But now the country appears to have a new crackdown on illegal cryptocurrency mining. Tens of thousands of illegal Bitcoin mining machines were shown on a farm in southeastern Iran in a video that aired on social media earlier in the week. The farm is owned by a Chinese-Iranian investment company, and after its operations were discovered, the farm's electricity supply was cut off by the Iranian Ministry of Energy.
Bitcoin mining in Iran is legal, but it must be authorized
Cryptocurrency mining was legalized in Iran in July 2019, and was initially welcomed by miners before many started going underground, claiming electricity rates were too high. Unauthorized miners caught using subsidized energy are fined as much as the loss they cause to the national grid. Since legalization, authorities have closed at least 1.620 illegal mining companies that used 250 MW of electricity at that time.
However, many in the cryptocurrency industry believe they are being unfairly blamed. Tehrani cryptocurrency researcher Ziya Sadr told the Washington Post over the weekend: “The miners have nothing to do with the blackouts. Mining is a very small percentage of the overall electrical capacity in Iran ”. And what do you think of all this. Mine cryptocurrencies or trade them only with platforms such as Bitcoin Pro?
