Cryptominers in Iran Cause Power Shortages and Smog
Power shortages, darkness, lots of smoke and... cryptocurrencies. Cryptomining has become very popular in Iran, resulting in the aformentioned effects, and stems from the coutry's rather specific situation.
- Cryptomining farms likely contributed to power outages in Iran;
- More than 1,600 "farms" were shut down - their average total energy consumption was 250 MWh.
We recently wrote about a cryptomining rig consisting of 78 GeForce RTX 3080 GPUs. But even this design may seem small next to some cryptofarms that can be found in various places around the world. Iran has quite specific conditions for the development of this kind of "business". Low energy prices and financial embargoes imposed by the U.S. have made mining BitCoins, among other things, very popular there. So much so that the country is starting to run out of energy.
In recent weeks we have seen an increase in the occurrence of power outages in Iran. Many cities are shrouded in smog - in some places the air pollution is extremely high. This may be due to the burning of oil in power stations, which in turn is a result of their increased operation and the resulting shortage of gas. However, Iran's minister of petroleum has denied that oil is being used to generate energy.
The increased demand for energy has been blamed on cryptocurrency farms, which are popular in Iran to the point that they account for a significant percentage of the load on the country's power grid. Total domestic power consumption in recent days has reached 41 GWh. This prompted the services to intervene - more than 1,600 cryptomining farms, consuming a total of 250 MWh, were shurdown. This is according to Rajab Mashhadi, spokesman for the Iranian Electricity Industry Association (source). Around 6,000 farms in Markazi province have also been confiscated due to the possible exposure of the grid to overloads (source).
In addition to legitimate cryptomining companies, there are thousands of illegal farms operating in Iran. Favorable financial conditions make foreign companies set up their mines in the country, mainly from China, but also from Europe. According to one source, illegal cryptomining operations consume approx. 300 MWh of energy. At the current Bitcoin exchange rate, one transaction consumes an average of 623 kWh of energy (source), which corresponds to the monthly demand of an average household.
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Arkadiusz Strzala
His adventure in writing began with his own blog and contributing to one of the early forums (in the olden days of Wireless Application Protocol). An electrical engineer by profession, he has a passion for technology, constructing and, of course, playing computer games. He has been a newsman and writer for Gamepressure since April 2020. He specializes in energy and space tech. However, he does not shy away from more relaxed matters every now and then. He loves watching science-fiction movies and car channels on YouTube. He mainly plays on the PC, although he has modest console experience too. He prefers real-time strategies, FPS and all sorts of simulators.
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