In recent weeks certain cities in Iran have been dealing with significant power outages leaving people without power for hours at a time.
Along with combating COVID-19 and these outages, major cities in Iran have also seen increased toxic smog issues. You may be wondering what this has to do with cryptocurrency?
- In recent days, mass speculation has been pointing the finger at Bitcoin miners as the leading factor for both the outages and smog.
- These accusations have led to a mass crackdown by the Iran authorities resulting in more than 1,600 mining operations being shut down, including legally authorized ones.
However, looking deeper, there seems to be more to the story than authorities are letting on. Many argue that these accusations are nothing more than a ploy to distract from the real issues facing Iran.
- Many Iranians are left without access to global payment networks, making Bitcoin valuable and necessary for many.
- Iran subsidizes its electricity making it about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. That number may not seem significant until you realize that the United States average is about 13 cents.
- Seeing this significant difference, it is no surprise that Iran sits among the top 10 countries in the world for Bitcoin mining capacity.
- Estimations say that Bitcoin accounts for around 2% of total electricity use in Iran, Far from the numbers required to be causing the issues stated.
These headlines and updates have caused some understandable confusion among both Iran miners and cryptocurrency in general. Seeing that Iran is within the top 10 for cryptocurrency mining ability it would be a damaging blow to an already suffering economy to lose such an income. More updates will be made as new information is available. Please follow and like for more content.
