The Paypers

45,000 mostly application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines were confiscated. The powerful machines had purportedly been consuming 95 megawatts per hour of electricity at a reduced rate. Earlier this month, Iranian authorities shut down 1,620 illegal cryptocurrency mining farms said to have collectively used 250 megawatts of electricity over the past 18 months.

The country's recent blackouts across major cities have been blamed in part on cryptocurrency mining, drawing the ire of officials who have sought a temporary stay on Bitcoin mining until further notice.

Cryptocurrency researchers say that miners had nothing to do with the blackouts, claiming they only made up a very small percentage of overall electricity capacity in the country. In July 2020, Iran penned a registration directive forcing miners to disclose their identities. It also forced them to disclose the size of their mining farms and their mining equipment type to the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade.

Iran seizes tens of thousands of Bitcoin mining machines