The U.S. Wants To Stop The Mining of The Cryptocurrency In Iran

The assistant of the Ministry of industry, trade, and Supply of Iran, Saeed Zarandi claims that the U.S. Congress is trying to put an end to the mining of the cryptocurrency in Iran as mentioned in the local papers. According to Zarandi, US Congress believes that the money laundering and evading the sanctions will become much more comfortable with cryptocurrency, and hence, it is necessary to stop the mining of the cryptocurrencies in Iran.

Zarandi has also informed that many of the Iranian officials in the ministry are currently working to resolve this issue with the country’s central bank. At the end of last year, U.S. officials had also introduced a bill to impose further sanctions on Iran’s financial institutions and the development and use of the national cryptocurrency, but the bills have not been passed yet. The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) had released a brief showing how Iran allegedly used cryptocurrencies to evade the sanctions.

Despite setbacks in cryptocurrency earlier this year Iran had announced its plan for a national cryptocurrency called the PayMan which is a gold-backed digital currency. The cryptocurrency is similar to that of Venezuela’s cryptocurrency Petro. However, it is still uncertain how the cryptocurrency works in Iran since recently; the country has seized around 1000 bitcoins from the mining machines.

The Ministry of Energy seems to be planning in the cutting of the power supply to all cryptocurrency mining operations by taking advantage of the country’s subsidized electricity. Iran is one of the countries that has the cheapest electricity in the world. One of the Iranian officials of Iranian Parliament’s Economic Committee,

Ali Akbar Karimi said, “Mining cryptocurrencies has become a common and widespread activity in Iran, and it consumes considerable power which has caused problems for the country, especially in the hot season.”