GPU mining farms in Iran are causing major country-wide blackouts

Chinese mining companies are moving their farms to Iran as electricity costs are so low, country-wide blackouts now occur.

@anthony256

Published Feb 7, 2021 7:35 PM CST
Updated Mar 12, 2021 10:56 AM CST

43 seconds read time

Chinese mining firms have been moving their crypto mining farms over to Iran because electricity prices are so cheap in Iran (1.8 to 2.2c per kWh) but now Iran is hosting some major farms, they're experiencing blackouts.

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Iran is now home to 14 massive crypto mining farms that consume 300 megawatts of power, which if you compare to a city with 100,000 residents -- it's about the same power consumption. The University of Cambridge says that Iran is included in the 6 most popular places in the world to mine cryptocurrency.

If you can't find NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards cards right now, these pictures are going to make you cringe so bad it's not funny. It seems that NVIDIA and its AIB partners have zero issues pumping cards out for crypto miners, while gamers cower in the dark waiting for Ampere cards that they ordered many months ago at launch.

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The current crypto boom is hitting 2016 (and beyond) levels at the moment, with even GeForce RTX 30 series gaming laptops being purchased en masse for crypto miners. Insanity!

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NEWS SOURCES:videocardz.com, elchapuzasinformatico.com

Anthony Garreffa

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.