Saeed Zarandi, Iranian Assistant Minister of Industry, Trade, and Supply, said that the United States Congress is working to stop Iran’s access to cryptocurrencies and bitcoin (BTC) mining, as reported by local news service Al-Fars on July 6. According to Zarandi, Congress considers cryptocurrency a tool for evading sanctions and money laundering, and is therefore trying to legislate against Iran’s access to it, complicating Iran’s legislation. Commenting that the issue of cryptocurrencies remained unsettled in Iran, Zarandi reportedly said that Iranian ministries are working with the Central Bank of Iran to settle the subject of cryptocurrencies and their usage within …

Authorities in Iran have confiscated about 1,000 units of bitcoin (BTC) mining machines from two now-defunct factories, BBC reported on June 28 As reported, local authorities noticed a surge in electricity consumption by 7% earlier in June and linked it to cryptocurrency mining activities. Officials subsequently discovered and removed the mining hardware from two former factories. Arash Navab, an electricity official, reportedly said that "two of these bitcoin farms have been identified, with a consumption of one megawatt." An Oxford researcher told the BBC that Iranians are increasingly turning to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as a means of skirting sanctions. Cointelegraph …

Iranian bitcoin (BTC) miners are moving into mosques as the government launches an energy crackdown, social media users revealed on June 25. Iran, which offers free energy to mosques, now has around 100 miners occupying places of worship, generating much-needed income of around $260,000 a year. “This money goes a long way in Iran’s choked sanctioned economy,” Oxford University researcher Mahsa Alimardani explained on Twitter. Despite its increasingly troubled economic situation, Iran remains uncoordinated when it comes to cryptocurrency policy. Last year, the central bank officially forbade lenders from servicing crypto businesses, at the same time as officials said they …

The Iranian government will be cutting off power to crypto mining until new energy prices are approved, according to a report by local news agency Iran Daily on June 24. Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, an official at Iran’s Ministry of Energy, reportedly revealed that the country has seen a 7% spike of electricity consumption over a monthly period ending on June 21, 2019. Rajabi emphasized the unusual nature of the spike, as opposed to similar time spans in the past years, revealing that the country’s power grid had evidently become unstable. According to the official, the Iranian Ministry of Energy believes …

A new report on the Telegram Open Network (TON) by Russian research agency Aton — published today, June 14, on Cointelegraph — reveals new details about one of the most anticipated projects in the crypto space. TON is a blockchain platform developed by encrypted instant messaging service Telegram, which is widely regarded as one of the primary means of communication within the blockchain and crypto community. The blockchain network reportedly aims to gain wide usage due to the active, crypto-friendly Telegram community. According to the report, TON will facilitate internal payments, host decentralized applications (DApps) and provide wallet services, among …

The deputy energy minister of Iran has said that electricity bills for digital currency miners should be calculated in accordance to real prices, Iranian economic daily newspaper Financial Tribune reported on June 9. Iran’s deputy energy minister, Homayoun Haeri, has stated that electricity bills for cryptocurrency mining activities should be priced according to the same rates established for power exports. The government reportedly pays nearly $1 billion in subsidies annually to bridge the gap in real electricity costs and what consumers are billed, Financial Tribune writes. As reported last December, Iranians were profiting from digital currency mining despite the crash …

This article previously contained statements implying that Binance DEX itself — rather than its website — was geoblocking users. It has been updated for accuracy. The decentralized exchange (DEX) developed by major cryptocurrency exchange Binance will block website access to users based in 29 countries. The Binance DEX website informs potential users of the restriction via a message that appears when accessing the platform from one of the regions. The message appearing on the platform states that accessing the website from certain countries will be restricted starting on July 1: “It seems you are accessing www.binance.org from an IP address …

Iran’s plan to battle international sanctions through the use of a state-sponsored cryptocurrency has been brewing for over a year now. It’s been a viable and exciting option for a country that had been cut off from the global economic community up until 2015 and again in 2017, following a short reprieve after agreeing to dial down its nuclear energy program. Despite all of this, Iran is still grappling with international pressures, including a ban on the acquisition of United States dollars in the country. American regulators are also looking to block the use of cryptocurrency as an alternate means …

The Central Bank of Iran (CBI), via its Informatics and Services Corporation (ISC) and in conjunction with Areatak — a Tehran-based blockchain solutions provider — is developing a national blockchain project for its banking and financial sector. Called the Borna platform, Iran hopes to use the project to revamp its banking ecosystem, creating a digital financial economy that will replace the current legacy system. There are also future plans to open up the platform to local private establishments, creating a unitary monetary and banking system for the country. Given the country’s current standoff with the United States and the renewal …

Major peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange LocalBitcoins.com has banned users living in Iran, according to their website as of today, May 24. Screenshot of LocalBitcoin Iranian page as of press time A source had previously told Cointelegraph in an email that the impetus for restricting Iranian transactions is to comply with financial regulations in Finland, where the headquarters of LocalBitcoins.com is located. Moreover, exchanges are purportedly cutting off Iranian users due to sanctions previously imposed on other exchanges by the United States. Major crypto exchanges Coinbase and Binance do not currently support users living in Iran. One of the purported advantages of …

Big Four consulting and auditing company PwC has linked Iranian nationals behind Bitcoin (BTC) ransomware scheme SamSam to the crypto exchange WEX in a recent report published in February. The report is based on information that was previously disclosed by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ). As per the DOJ, two Iranians — Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri — were responsible for creating SamSam. SamSam is a ransomware demanding Bitcoin that reportedly damaged multiple U.S. companies, government agencies, universities, and hospitals. Within 34 months the hackers managed to extort over $6 million in Bitcoin and cause …

From Jan. 29 to 30, Tehran hosted the eighth annual conference on Electronic Banking and Payment Systems, which was promoted by the Monetary and Banking Research Institution, the research arm of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). Among the announced topics under the theme of the “Blockchain Revolution,” it was the unveiling of the Iranian plan for a national digital currency that, as a matter of fact, remained rather vague after it was presented during the conference. In his inaugural speech, Ali Divandari — the director of the Monetary and Banking Research Institution — stressed that “the realities of blockchain …