The entire world, it seems, is concerned about the economic and environmental cost of mining bitcoin. Back in June 2019, Leaprate reported several news articles about the huge carbon imprint that bitcoin mining leaves:
….bitcoin mining caused around 23 millions tons of carbon dioxide – an amount similar to the one in major cities or even entire developing countries such as Sri Lanka.
However, as high as the environmental cost might be, the economic one may be shrinking, especially in countries such as Iran.
Iran is currently known as having low electricity cost when it comes to mining bitcoin. According to a recent research by Elite Fixtures, the cost of mining Bitcoin costs around $3,200 due to the specialised nature of the mining software employed such as AntMiner S9 and Avalon 6.
The more interesting phenomenon is that just recently the Iranian government decided to stop the power for mining cryptocurrencies until new energy prices were approved.
The power grid of Iran has become unstable and energy consumption has risen with 7% over a month back in June 2019. Such increase was believed to be caused by mining digital coins, an action that cost the Government of Iran the staggering amount of $1 billion in subsidies “to lower the difference between the real cost of electricity and the amount consumers are actually billed.”
As a solution to the problem, the Government of Iran has decided to announce the crypto mining activity as an industry that needs further regulatory oversight from Iran.
This is what the head of the economic commission of the Iranian Parliament, Elyas Hazrati, commented on the decision:
We do believe that the cryptocurrency industry should be recognized as an official industry in Iran to let the country take advantage of its tax and customs revenues.