Winter Freeze<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\nMeanwhile, winter temperatures have led to a surge of domestic gas consumption for home heating in Iran.<\/p>\n
According to the semiofficial Iranian Students\u2019 News Agency, that has caused natural-gas shortages and forced power plants to burn low-grade fuels in order to generate the electricity that keeps the bitcoin mines and the rest of the economy running.<\/p>\n
Combined with increased automobile traffic due to the closure of mass transit systems aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, residents of Iranian cities are now subjected to a visible rise in air pollution.<\/p>\n
Health officials warn the increased pollutants are causing respiratory illnesses that complicate the symptoms of those fighting COVID-19 and increase the death rate.<\/p>\n
In fact, Iranian officials first announced the country’s power grid was struggling from a cryptocurrency surge during the summer of 2019 — before Tehran lifted its restrictions on bitcoin farming and transactions.<\/p>\n
In June 2019, Energy Ministry spokesman Mostafa Rajabi announced an \u201cunusual\u201d spike in electricity consumption from illicit bitcoin operations that were making the power grid \u201cunstable\u201d and causing problems for consumers.<\/p>\n
State-controlled television that summer reported a crackdown on two cryptocurrency mines in the central Yazd Province.<\/p>\n
Located in abandoned factories, authorities said they were each operating more than 1,000 bitcoin machines.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s deputy energy minister warned that same month that the number of cryptocurrency operations was increasing, with some being based in “schools and mosques” that receive electricity for free.<\/p>\n
Now, faced with a growing public outcry over the smog and power outages, Iranian officials are being forced to expand their crackdowns.<\/p>\n
On January 12, Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian said Chinese bitcoin mines would be allowed to continue as long as they extracted cryptocurrencies in accordance with a legal license.<\/p>\n
A video then went viral on social media showing thousands of bitcoin machines being operated as part of a licensed Iranian-Chinese cryptocurrency farm in the southeastern city of Rafsanjan.<\/p>\n
Iranian state media reported that the bitcoin mining farm had been using 175 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity — nearly one-third of the total amount of electricity allotted for all cryptocurrency operations in the country.<\/p>\n
On January 14, Iran\u2019s state-owned Tanavir electricity firm announced the temporary closure of the Iranian-Chinese bitcoin operation.<\/p>\n
Rajab Mashhadi, a spokesman for Iran\u2019s electricity industry union, said on January 14 that a total of 1,620 illegal cryptocurrency firms that consumed around 250 MWh of electricity also have been deactivated.<\/p>\n
But with many more \u201cunauthorized\u201d bitcoin extraction centers continuing to operate across the country, as well as operations authorized by the Energy Ministry, it\u2019s unclear how much longer residents of Iranian cities will have to endure the smog and cryptocurrency power outages.<\/p>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iranian authorities are blaming power outages and worsening air pollution in cities across the country on the energy drain caused by bitcoin mining operations. The cryptocurrency farms are\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,25,4,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9432,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431\/revisions\/9432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}