Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, a spokesman for the Iranian Energy Ministry’s electrical sector, said that the power to equipment that is allowed to mine cryptocurrency will be turned off at the start of the next Iranian calendar month Tir (Wednesday, June 22) and won’t be turned back on until the end of the limit.
Rajabi Mashhadi said that there are now 118 approved cryptocurrency mining units in the country. Starting next month, these units will have to cut themselves off from the national grid.
Last week, the country’s peak electricity use set a new record at 62,500 megawatts (MW), which is a big number, he said. He also said that, according to projections, the consumption need for this [Iranian calendar] week (which ends on Friday) will be over 63,000 MW, which means there isn’t enough electricity to go around.
In 2019, after the Iranian government-approved cryptocurrency mining as an industry, many companies started mining cryptocurrencies all over the country because electricity was so cheap. Iranian power plants have started to see this industry as a way to make money.
In January 2020, more than a thousand licenses for cryptocurrency mining equipment were given out by the Ministry of Industry, Mining, and Trade.
In addition to the licensed units, some illegal miners have started using home electricity to mine cryptocurrency. This has caused a lot of problems for the country’s electrical infrastructure, which is already in bad shape because of the drought and lack of rain.
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