Iran announced the detention of 1,000 bitcoin mining machines at two mines due to huge power consumption

Iranian media reported that electricity consumption in Iran surged 7% last month. After checking, Iran was found that the rapid increase in electricity consumption was mainly due to mining problems. Subsequently, the Iranian government announced the detention of about 1,000 specialized mining machines in the two mines. It is reported that the mines detained this time are all bitcoin mining machines.

“Bitcoin vs. Ethereum”by QuoteInspector is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Earlier, the Iranian Central Bank had banned the trading of virtual currency in Iran. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum virtual currency were completely banned. The Iranian Ministry of Energy publicly released news that the virtual currency mine consumes a large amount of electricity, which not only causes waste of resources but also erodes government power subsidies.

The Iranian government does not want these virtual currency mines to erode local power resources and government subsidies, so Iran does not allow such mines anyway. The Iranian Ministry of Energy assessed that the electricity consumed by a virtual currency mine is equivalent to the electricity consumption of 24 households throughout the year, which obviously causes huge waste.

Proponents of a virtual currency believe that the depreciation of the Iranian currency and the shrinking of the economy have made virtual currency such as Bitcoin a good means of hedging. Moreover, the use of virtual currency can also bypass the United States to impose sanctions on Iran through other entities, so the Iranian government should not completely ban virtual currency.

In response to this statement, the Iranian government is indeed considering the possibility of formulating a new policy that allows the operation of virtual currency mines but the electricity bill is higher than that of households.

Via: Reuters