Iranian BTC Miners Risk Jail Time As Government Regulates Mining

Iranian BTC miners are under the risk of being jailed for mining cryptocurrency as the government started cracking down on crypto mining operations over the past three months as we read in the latest blockchain news today.

The new legislation for formal mining licenses is currently pending in the country and the authorities have not yet officially approved the mining license process so now the miners are operating in perpetual fear. In some of the cases, the Iranian BTC miners risk being jailed for continuing to operate or they will face fines or get their equipment sealed off. As one miner stated:

 “If the government learns about my equipment, they’ll seal it and turn it off. I’d be arrested. … After six months of waiting [for licensing regulations], they still want to make miners seem like criminals.”

Another bitcoin miner explained that the government confiscated about 80,000 mining devices over the past few months so it is very hard to say what the real numbers are since they are not open to the public. This particular miner lost access to thousands of machines as he was operating a huge industrial farm connected directly to a power plant. He stated that more than 30 households lost their income when the government shut down the operations. He also explained that some of the miners surrender their deeds to their homes in order to get out of jail because the fines can be more expensive than their salaries since they range from $2,000 and $5,000 per machine.

In Iran, the electricity prices vary according to the use cases so in the case of bitcoin mining, they can get very expansive but they are still not formally established. The bitcoin miners face compliance hurdles from many government agencies that are related to both smuggled equipment and electricity fees. One of the miners stated:

 “If [the government] really wanted to fine all the people in the country using or selling smuggled merchandise, they’d have to fine everyone in this country. Yet in just one area in the southern part of Tehran, a dozen [mining] farms were [recently] closed.”

As per the cryptocurrency news today, the focus on fining bitcoin miners is brining havoc on the Iranian crypto community and more than 600 miners claimed that their biggest challenge to bitcoin was the lack of regulatory clarity.