Iran offers $20 to report on shady crypto miners amid ongoing power crisis

Iran has begun offering $20 bounties for reporting illegal crypto miners, amid severe power outages crippling the country’s power grid.

Iran plans to offer a $20 bounty to people who report illegal cryptocurrency mining activities after the country suffered severe power outages along with an intense heat wave and energy crisis.

Iranian authorities will offer a reward of around $20 for tips on illegal crypto mining equipment in an effort to reduce the impact of unregulated activity that is significantly disrupting the national power grid, Iran International reported.

The report said Iran was experiencing its worst heat wave in 50 years, causing widespread power outages and straining industrial production. The head of Iran’s state electricity company Tavanir, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, said unauthorized mining was further straining an already overstretched electricity infrastructure.

“Opportunistic individuals are using subsidized electricity and public grids without proper authorization to mine cryptocurrencies. This unauthorized mining has led to an abnormal increase in electricity consumption, causing significant outages and problems in the country’s power grid.”

Mostafa Rajabi Meshhadi

Meshhadi said that more than 230 thousand illegal mining devices consuming 800-900 megawatts of electricity have been detected so far, adding that the electricity consumption from these devices is equal to the electricity consumption of Markazi province and that a new 1,300 megawatt power plant will need to be built to replace them.

In addition to these measures, the report states that Iranian intelligence services have targeted more than 9,000 accounts belonging to 454 people engaged in illegal trade since 2022.

Earlier in May, US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Angus King called for a thorough investigation into possible links between Iranian crypto mining and the circumvention of US sanctions. They allege that crypto obtained through mining could be used to bypass sanctions and fund terrorist groups like Hezbollah and contribute to Iran’s military actions.