Iran’s power company Tavanir has brought down the shutters on 1100 cryptocurrency mining farms following info from whistleblowers. These crypto mining centres were operating without requisite licenses.
Even though Tavanir states that a handful of the miners were utilizing “high levels” of government subsidized power, their report contradicted by stating that no considerable variations were identified in power consumption.
Underlining the importance of whistleblowers, domestic authorities have stated that they “cannot detect all illegal farms solely by studying their consumption patterns.”
Informers who gave the pertinent information to authorities were awarded 100 million rials (~$480), according to the media release by the Financial Tribune. In recent times, Iran has stated that they will permit functioning of industrial scale power plants as Bitcoin miners, but barred from using subsidized energy.
The country’s cryptocurrency mining law necessitates miners to reveal their identities and submit extensive information to the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade. The data includes size of mining centres and nature of hardware equipment used for mining. The info is used to avoid smuggling activities. The status of miners could be either individuals or companies.
For each one of the equipment installed without license, crypto miners could be slapped a fine of between $2,000 and $5,000. Furthermore, arrested individuals would be fined $20,000 for using a subsidized power source. In May, the country’s Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade awarded cryptocurrency mining license to iMiner, which operates 6,000 rigs, the largest in the country.
Last July, the government of Iran endorsed cryptocurrency mining as an industrial process and has issued more than 1000 licenses so far to cryptocurrency mining firms.
