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Amidst heavy crack down imposed by the Iranian Government on cryptocurrency miners due to extensive flow of energy, the President also announced and asked its Government to start preparing for a planned legal structure for legalizing mining in the country recently. This breaks down the fact that even though the authorities try to stop the spread of crypto, they cannot contain it. On one hand there is a crackdown on illegal miners, while on the other hand, provinces like Tehran have authorized almost 30 facilities that will now start mining cryptocurrency legally.
Iran issue legal miners to operate in Tehran, Semnan and other provinces
Around 30 mining operators in Iran have been permitted to mint licensed cryptocurrency. The regions that have been licensed include Tehran province as well. This information was announced by the Government whilst an intense crackdown going on on illegal miners in Iran. The Ministry of Industries. Mining. And Trading revealed this data on the official website of the Government. The Semnan Province, next to Tehran, which is the capital of Iran, has 6 licensed issued mining operations in the region. With Semnan at the top, next is Alborz province with 4 crypto farms, and followed by Mazandaran, East Azerbaijan, and Zanjan provinces.
Energy consumption increases, crackdown intensifies
After legalizing cryptocurrency mining about 2 years ago, Iran has seen massive development through it. Mining became an attractive business to the people because of the cheap electricity rates supplied by the Government to endorse more mining in order to circumvent the sanctions imposed by the United States. This led to an increase in the daily energy consumption by an overcrowded set of miners in the entire country. Hence, to control the excessive flow of electricity, Iran had to shut down mining operations till September as illegal miners were also using extra energy. Now, Iran has sanctioned 30 licences for mining farms across major provinces.
Iran had almost 18 crypto farms running legally a year ago. However, the Government claims that illegal farms used about 2,000 megawatts of electricity while the legal limit issued to miners was 300 megawatts daily. Within a year, Iran has shut down over 180 cryptocurrency mining operations in the Tehran province and around 3,000 mining hardware that was used illegally in earlier days of June 2021. Even last week, the law enforcement seized about 7,000 Bitcoin mining machines.
In conclusion, Iran cannot be called a state that is against crypto but the free fall of electricity in the country has caused numerous problems that are now getting tough to break out of.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
