According to a report by local media outlet Tasmin News Agency on Sunday, 45,000 mostly powerful application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines were confiscated.
According to Tavanir’s head Mohammad Hassan Motavalizadeh, the machines had reportedly been consuming 95 megawatts per hour of electricity at a reduced rate.
At the beginning of this month, Iranian authorities shut down 1,620 illegal cryptocurrency mining farms said to have collectively used 250 megawatts of electricity over the last 18 months, per a different news source.
According to Coindesk, the country’s recent blackouts across major cities have been in part blamed on cryptocurrency mining, drawing the ire of officials who have sought a temporary stay on bitcoin (BTC) mining until further notice.
On Sunday, cryptocurrency researcher Ziya Sadr told the Washington Post miners had “nothing to do with the blackouts” stating they only made up a “very small” percentage of overall electricity capacity in the country.
In July 2020, Iran penned a registration directive forcing miners to disclose their identities. It also forced them to disclose the size of their mining farms and their mining equipment type with the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade.
