Iran allows energy companies to mine Bitcoin

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Iran, one of the most influential Islamic countries, has allowed their energy companies to mine Bitcoin since the beginning of this week, a very important change for theocratic country.

Firstly, the Mullahs, the clerics who govern Iran, are showing other Islamic countries that crypto is okay and secondly, their Bitcoin companies, which have almost the cheapest energy in the world at their disposal, can thus become direct competitors of China and the US.

Tavanir

It was the Iranian Ministry of Energy that gave the country’s largest energy company, known as Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission Company, or Tavanir, permission to use their electricity to mine Bitcoin from now on.

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It’s a remarkable change of course for the country. After all, in 2018, Iran officially recognized cryptocurrency mining as a legal industry. This was done mainly to control and regulate the Bitcoin miners that were already active in the country. In 2019, however, Iran shut them all down and made it illegal to mine cryptocurrency with industrial electricity.

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But its now changing the rules to make Bitcoin mining legal again.

Since Iranian crypto mining companies only pay $0.01 to $0.05 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity because energy is subsidized in the country, China and the U.S. immediately have a competitor.

Muslim crypto

Only last December Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called for cooperation with Turkey and Malaysia, two other major Islamic countries, to create a joint “Muslim crypto”. Turkish President Erdogan has not yet responded.