Tehran, the capital of Iran, has plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours.
Other cities have also been affected by the outages. Traffic lights died. Offices went dark. Online classes stopped.
With toxic smog blanketing the skies and the country buckling under the pandemic and other mounting crises, social media has been rife with speculation about what was to blame.
Soon, fingers pointed at an unlikely culprit: Bitcoin.
Within days, as frustration spread among residents, the government launched a wide-ranging crackdown on bitcoin processing centers, which require immense amounts of electricity to power their specialized computers and to keep them cool — a burden on Iran’s power grid.
Authorities shuttered 1,600 centers across the country, including, for the first time, those legally authorized to operate.
As the latest … Read the rest
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