The deputy director of Iran’s state utility Tabanir said on Wednesday that authorities discovered and confiscated around 252,000 illegal cryptographic machines amid a surge in whistleblowers paid for in cash.
According to a Press TV report, Mohammad Allahdad said the confiscated machine could have been responsible for 4 gigawatts (GW) of power consumption.
“This is equivalent to its use in three or four small states of Iran,” Alladad said in an interview with National Television.
He said Iran’s Energy Ministry hopes that the illicit cryptography tightens will help address the expected record demand for electricity in July and August.
Officials said they paid approximately 80 billion rials ($0.1 million) to whistleblowers who helped the government identify the location of illegal cryptographic machines.
However, Allahdad said it could discourage the misuse of subsidies for encryption by calling for even more severe penalties on machine owners and operators.
Tabanir and Iranian judiciary announced in January that they had stepped up crackdowns on illegal cryptomining amid rising demand for electricity in the country that has extended their power plants to the limit.
A report released in February showed that 15,000 cryptographic machines were discovered 10 months earlier, with roughly 13,000 of those devices being destroyed.
Estimates at the time suggest that Iranian encryption is responsible for 0.8 GW of electricity demand, with authorities saying that each cryptographic machine’s consumption equals the power usage of 10 households.
MNA