It is impossible to ban mining in Iran

The Parliamentary Research Center recently published a report on the state of Iran’s mining and electricity consumption in this sector, and included recommendations on legislation in this area. Experts from the Islamic Consultative Assembly believe that in the current situation, a complete ban on the extraction of digital currencies in the country is impossible.

According to Arzdigital, the Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, which is in charge of conducting the scientific research required by the Majlis, recently published a report on its official website examining Iran’s digital currency extraction industry and related sectors, and making suggestions in this regard. Legislation of the industry has provided.

In the following, we read the summary of this research together.

The effect of digital currency extraction on the stability of Iran’s electricity network

What has been discussed about the extraction of energy cryptocurrencies in Iran and has been the subject of policy-making has been related to the extraction of bitcoins. Also, the biggest danger considered by the policymaker has been damage to the stability of the country’s electricity network. In this regard, illegal consumption has faced legal action. So far, most of the discoveries have been in the field of Bitcoin cryptocurrencies.

From the beginning of the plan to deal with unlicensed extractors from 1398 to 1400, the total detection and identification of illegal cryptocurrency extraction devices has reached 221,163 devices with a power consumption of 621 MW. Of course, these unauthorized cryptocurrencies have been discovered at various times, and not all of them have been active in the power grid at the same time.

The most explicit action of the country in the policy of cryptocurrency extraction was the ban on cryptocurrency extraction in the country in the summer of 1400. But this policy is practically a failure; Because Iran’s absolute monthly tremor in the Bitcoin network increased from 94.6 million tremors on May 10, 1400 to only 75.3 million tremors on August 10, 1400 (one month and ten days after the order to cut off Ramzarz mining farms). This means that more than half of the cryptocurrencies were extracting cryptocurrencies regardless of government orders and power outages. The power consumption of these extractors in the most pessimistic state was less than 800 megawatt-hours. While the deficit of the country’s electricity network has been more than 10,000 MWh. In the most pessimistic case, less than 10% of the country’s electricity deficit can be attributed to the extraction of ciphers.

But a more serious danger that needs to be addressed is the country’s weakness in implementing negative and positive policies in the field of cryptocurrency mining. The main danger seems to be due to the spread of cryptocurrencies such as atrium in private homes. Bitcoin cryptocurrencies are mined on large farms with equipment that has a tangible consumption with higher detection and detection capabilities; But the total power consumption in private homes for atrium extraction is probably less than 12 megawatts. Extracting cryptocurrencies like Atrium requires less power and, of course, more expensive and highly valued equipment, and most importantly, it is more difficult to track and can lead to an uncontrollable increase in household electricity consumption.

Dealing with threats while taking advantage of the technological opportunities ahead requires the adoption of a transparent regulatory framework to oversee any production and extraction of assets of the head office distributed in the country. Studies show that it is impossible to impose a complete ban on the extraction of cryptocurrencies in our country with the current technical capacity and regulations of the country. Also, late action in organizing the extraction of cryptocurrencies can face major obstacles to regulation and policy in this area.

So far, the extraction of energy-saving cryptocurrencies has been discussed in our country; But not all types of cryptocurrency extraction waste energy. New types of cryptocurrency mining are being developed that bring a typical economic activity, such as providing content storage space or providing computing power for useful activities such as augmented reality and virtual or meta-environment management, into the field of mining competition.

Read the full text of the Parliamentary Research Center report from this link.