How Much Bitcoin Has Iran Mined? It's Complicated

By Ryan S. Gladwin

Iran has been mining and trading in cryptocurrencies out of necessity due to major global sanctions and a local currency that has dwindled in value due to severe inflation since at least 2019. However, experts told Decrypt it’s still nearly impossible to estimate its holdings.

The University of Cambridge’s Center for Alternative Finance estimated that the nation accounted for 7.5% of Bitcoin’s hashrate in March 2021, a figure that fell as low as just 0.12% in January 2022.

Throughout its history, Andrew Scott Easton, founder and CEO of Bitcoin miner fund Masterminded, estimated that the country has mined approximately 60,000 BTC—which would be worth $6.4 billion at current prices.

Meanwhile, Kent Halliburton, co-founder and CEO of mining platform Sazmining, estimated since 2018, the country has mined between 100,000 and 200,000 BTC. That could mean its holdings are worth between $10.7 billion and $21.4 billion. The timing is significant, as in 2019, Iran started issuing legal permits for crypto mining.

But Rajat Ahlawat, researcher at compliance firm Crystal Intelligence, told Decrypt it's too complex to estimate. He said that’s because Iran’s mining industry has largely been driven underground in attempts to avoid high electricity prices.

The most easily traced sector is that of legally licensed crypto mining farms. In 2020, approximately 1,000 crypto mining farm licenses were issued, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran—a coalition that opposes the current government in Iran. The same source said that in 2022, more than 10,000 licenses were handed out to miners and exchanges. 

However, former President Hassan Rouhani has said himself that about 85% of mining in Iran was unlicensed as of 2021. Iran’s state electricity company, Tavanir, estimated that approximately 700,000 illegal mining rigs were operating in Iran earlier this year.

That is because licensed mining farms often struggle to flip a sizable profit, Ahlawat says, due to the high tariffs and electricity prices imposed upon them.

“Let's say the iron and steel industry—they use a lot of electricity for melting and stuff—but the tariffs that the iron and steel industry pays are lower than what [crypto] miners pay,” Ahlawat told Decrypt, explaining why so much mining goes underground.

When a new Bitcoin is mined, there is no on-chain trace of where the miner was located. That means that it is impossible to know where it has come from, which allows Iranian citizens and the government to avoid international sanctions.

As a result, a condition of the crypto mining license is that any mined Bitcoin must be sold directly to Iran’s central bank, so the government can benefit from avoiding sanctions. However, this means that individual miners and groups lose out on this benefit of Bitcoin mining.

As such, a lot of the mining in Iran comes from individuals and inside institutions, like schools and mosques, which have access to free or heavily subsidized electricity, Ahlawat explained. That’s not to mention government-linked organizations that mine Bitcoin and also benefit from reduced electricity fees.

These illegal operations put the Iranian electricity grid under immense pressure, causing nationwide power outages at times, while also skimming potential profits from the electricity providers. It has become such a large issue that Tavanir started offering bounties for those who reported unlawful crypto farms.

Due to crypto mining’s thirst for electricity and reports from local media, Ahlawat believes most of Iran’s farming could be found in its major cities. In 2022, for example, the Iranian police discovered and confiscated 9,404 illegal crypto mining devices in Tehran over six months. 

On Sunday, the United States bombed Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, which is buried deep in a mountain. From the day before the strike to Tuesday, according to BitInfoCharts, the Bitcoin hashrate dropped 27.9%. This led to a post on X going viral with speculation that Iran was mining Bitcoin in the mountains.

Ahlawat believes the nuclear facility would have the electrical infrastructure to operate a farm, but added there is no specific evidence suggesting there is a mining farm specifically at Fordow. Meanwhile, mining firm Blocksbridge Consulting pushed back against the theory in a newsletter, claiming that the industry shouldn’t look too closely at short-term hashrate figures due to how volatile it is as a daily metric (Galaxy research head Alex Thorn said much the same on X).

Although Ahlawat said, if the nuclear facility were to be mining Bitcoin, it would be at the hands of the Iranian government or one of its arms.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, aka the IRGC, is believed to be a big player in Iranian crypto mining, both Easton and Ahlawat said. The IRGC is a powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces, created after the Iranian revolution in 1979. Easton believes that the IRGC is likely the largest Bitcoin miner in Iran, citing an article by the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

“Again, we don't have the exact numbers,” Ahlawat added. “Since the government is involved, Iran has an excellent history of hiding things, so any mining done by the government is all hidden. That’s why we don’t have any insights into it.”

Put simply, we don't know for sure how much Bitcoin that Iran has mined. That's because an estimated 85% of the industry has been driven underground as a way to avoid high electricity bills and the desire to hold onto their crypto tokens.

It's easy to cast judgment on Iran's mining industry, but there is a large portion of the Iranian civilian population that is just mining crypto as a way to make some money and avoid the nation's hyperinflation. Decrypt found one social media account selling soundproof boxes for at-home miners, with 166,000 followers—0.18% of the entire Iranian population.

Iran's general public is so into crypto that last year, Iranian officials warned against playing the Telegram tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat. Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the deputy chief of Iran’s military, said it was a distraction created by the "enemy" to distract from the nation's politics, and called it part of the West's "soft war" on Iran.

Despite the warning, citizens tapped away at the clicker game that promised an airdrop of crypto tokens for in-game progression. The game attracted over 300 million players, all hoping to get rich from the Telegram mini app. However, many players complained that once they received their tokens, claiming they got nothing but "dust," due to its low value.

HMSTR is now down 90% from its all-time high, which it reached shortly after launch. If any Iranians held onto their HMSTR tokens hoping to avoid Iran's inflation rate of approximately 38%, they'd have failed.

Edited by Stacy Elliott

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