The Middle Eastern nation has gone against licensed crypto miners and will shut down all 118 legal ones in two days, according to a recent report. The country’s authorities have already done something similar in the past, citing the growing electricity demand during the summer.
- In an interview with a state-owned TV, reported by Bloomberg, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, a spokesman for Iran’s power industry, said the nation will stop providing electricity to all 118 licensed mining operators starting from June 22.
- As it happened last year, the authorities justified their decision with the growing demand for electricity as summer comes. Mashhadi highlighted a large number of power shortages in the past few weeks as the demand had surpassed 60,000 megawatts.
- Iran’s temporary ban last year was lifted at the end of September, but there’s no information about the country’s plans for 2022.
- Unlike previous years, though, Iran’s share in terms of BTC mining has been declining, so shutting down all licensed operations in the nation will not have much of an impact on the hash rate.
- Cambridge’s Bitcoin Mining Map shows that Iran has fallen behind other nations. For example, it accounted for 6.9% of the total hash rate in June last year, while the percentage has dropped significantly to 0.2% as of January 2022.
- Iran allowed certain crypto miners to operate legally in 2020 and has since seized countless rigs that lacked the necessary government-issued licenses.