Topic: Iran seizes 1,000 Bitcoin mining machines after power spike (Read 666 times)

Yes electricity it is free until it's abused. The funds do come from somewhere, probably built into taxation.

This article is strange and I do not understand it. How much of this is true?

The demand for mining equipment is growing, so the activity will require a serious settlement for many more years. Because it will deal with many people. And the main thing for the government or the obligation is to license mining companies or establish good high tariffs so that mining doesn’t benefit only miners to the state. Because the activity can be banned, and you can use it for the benefit of the country

The transition to more organized mining agrees that this is possible, but not its disappearance. After the start of Bitcoin growth again, China began to sell its mining equipment abroad.

Yeah I found that quite amusing too.
Can you imagine those miners being smuggled back out of iran?
They would probably think they are weapons of mass destruction and destroy them all on site.
[/quote]

Yeah, the new generation of targets for predator drones, forget oil fields, go after bitcoin mining farms.


Think of the guys that were installing the miners in the mosque, what would a policeman think seeing some guys at night unloading boxes from a truck and stashing them near the mosque?  Probably he would start calling for the antitero units.
While the situation is pretty serious is also a bit funny, dealing with bitcoin and bitcoin equipment is starting to look like a drug operation in some countries.

But seriously, that article is pretty weird.
They say first they've got 260k with 100 miners, that would be 2600 a year, not even an s9j would be able to do it with free electricity, and the new gear wasn't out for a year. If we put the number to 1000 and drive the income to 260 per unit is too little, they haven't even made roi on it.


Yeah, they try to catch up, by seizing the gear and throwing miners in prison.
Nice way of catching up.

Opportunelly when iran going to mining bitcoin on their country. I thing it;s personally person not by goverment. we don't know when iran have rules to control another payment like bitcoin, when this true, then iran will be big minner on the world,

As long as they can cope with electricity consumption and compared to the profits that can be obtained, I don't think this is a problem. but what if they can stand with it ?

No, because it is a business like any other, and shouldn't be penalized beyond any other when its not interfering with any other of your laws.
You are simply running computers for others to rent and getting foreign currency from it, and that is all. If your farm is in an industrial area paying industrial rates it should be respected like any other industrial activity. You could be wasting a lot of electricity welding metals, for example.

What some governments don't like is when the farmers mess with, say, controls to exchange of foreign currency. But if all you do is bring foreign currency tot the country, you are in fact acting like a sort of exporter. You need to buy local currency to keep operations running, this foreign currency wouldn't come should you not be there in the first place. Your constant buying of the local fiat is pushing a little in favor of this currency, just like the central banks in these borked economies tend to do. You are actually the ally of the government, not the other way around.

Of course crypto can bypass sanctions, its meant to separate money from State, and that includes State wanting to stop money flow from/to other States or individuals.

Iran would be wise to embrace Bitcoin rather than fight it. It is to their best interests...

They are not good at hiding it though...I am curious what is the take of their religion towards bitcoin mining? Sometimes they have irrational point of views on technological advancement. This news really surprised me. More than likely, the mosque permitted it because they are getting good amount of money from it.  

interesting news, but that's not surprising, because the latest conditions there are rather worrying. I have also seen some news that for crypto world affairs it will be tightened even can be deactivated from the country, so that it can make it difficult for bitcoin hunters in that country, hopefully the turmoil that exists in that country will soon be finished and can return to normal.

They also use mosque as a place to put these miners to work and the perfect cover up as they only just recently detected them being there.

It looks like Iran was rather invested in crypto - something, I only just learnt. However, the BBC report about the authorities seizing the hardware does seem to indicate to me that Iran is at leat trying to catch the new wave of technology and I hope other developing countries will follow the example set out by Iran.

The complete picture obviously matters, but cheap electricity grants you an edge over the miners that don't have cheap electricity and therefore need to stop mining the moment it has become unprofitable.

This is about Bitcoin miners. There aren't all that many altcoins with the same algorithm you can use SHA256 ASICS for. The alternative is Bcash or BSV. The few other SHA256 coins are almost worthless and not worth mining.

As for altcoins being more profitable to mine, I don't think so. Try to build an altcoin mining rig and mine Ethereum, Litecoin or Dash, I wish you good luck with that. Mining as a whole has exploded in the last years. It's no longer a niche.

Yeah I found that quite amusing too.
Can you imagine those miners being smuggled back out of iran?
They would probably think they are weapons of mass destruction and destroy them all on site.

I have interacted with many players from Iran in the gambling sites a couple of years back and from what i know from their perceptive is that there is an interest for bitcoin for a long time, majority of the people i interacted are not active in this forum but they are very much active in the trading and spend some time gambling and it is going on for a long time and some have accumulated huge amount of profits. So what i am trying to tell basically is that it is not a new thing, the people from Iran are active in the market for years and now we might see more people coming into the market like the rest of the world.
Not sure why these machines are seizes, whether they broke any rule by using huge amount of electricity or is it illegal to mine in Iran ?.

That was a good response.

Yeah, it's "virtually" free, just like gas in Venezuela.
The problems start when the government runs out of money to keep things free.


Who to ask in Iran?
Do you think they will allow police or whatever organization was in charge of the raid to talk to a western journalist?
They release a statement and we will have to be happy with that unless some guy that was working with those miners comes on this forum or Reddit or TW and gives some extra info, thing which I highly doubt.


Makes zero sense.
First, you have to buy mining gear and since none is produced in Iran you have to import those, so leaving a trace.
Not only is this stupid but think again

They paid foreigners to get the gear!!!
If you look to get your money out of the country since you have already done this paying bitmain or canaan or whatever, what's the point of getting bitcoin for it?

Then, you have to ROI to get that money back, what will happen if the war breaks tomorrow?
You're going to flee the country with a 9.5kg miner in your backpack?

It is clear that Iran citizens are preparing for the probability of what might happen since there is tension between them and the United States of America(USA). Bitcoin is the best form of money anyone can carry in case of war and that is why mining activities increase in Iran. On the other hands, this should influence the market positively as it might reduce the supply to bearable mining. But for the government, the best thing to do could have increased the power stations so the citizens and their economies will less depend on dollars or foreign currency for international trade.

The problem with mining is just having cheap electricity isn't favourble for mining. You need take into consideration several factors like the initial investment for hardware, BTC price, mining pool to join. You can try an online tool like cryptocompare to find how much profit you can actually make with BTC. If you are open to alts, there are many alt coins which will be more profitable

It's been affecting the supply of their power grid, so it makes sense to sound the alarm here. Even here during the summer, we also have this kind of color warning and advising people about saving energy. Unfortunately, in the case of Iran miners, they've been caught as per the report. We don't want to assume that an imminent war could happen though, it's far-fetched.

I have also seen news that some of these miners are situated in temples and that these temples are exempted from paying for electricity. So if there are a increase in power consumption and a higher need for electricity, then you could understand why the government would target the mining farms first.

A more sinister theory would be that the government is looking for coins to pay "anonymously" for weapons on the black market and that these mining farms were a easy target.

The Iranian energy minister has just done the wrong thing by raising the false alarm about bitcoin miners. If there is a spike in energy demand, then improve on the supply to meet up with the increasing demand as this means more money to the pocket of the government, and I hope their energy program is not free? Instead of threatening nuclear war with the US and Israel, they should channel their strength to developing their nation.