Tehran, Iran, Aug.20
Trend:
Iranian government has made efforts to facilitate mining Bitcoin and other crypto currencies; however, it needs to set tariffs to attract foreign investors, Managing Director of Iran's Blockchain Community Sepehr Mohammadi told Trend.
"The imposed tariff for mining is expensive and not competitive, comparing to tariffs in other regional countries such as Georgia, Russia and Kazakhstan," he said.
"Moreover, there is also tariff exemption in these countries, while in Iran the miners have to pay tax. In addition, they are required to turn off mining devices during power peak hours, so the investors, both local and foreign, prefer other countries in the region," he noted.
"Meanwhile, there is a vast volume of unconsumed power during peak hours and investors can buy energy in considerable volume, but we have created limits instead of capacity. The produced electricity can be put for sale to mining investors and bring revenues instead of oil exports," he added.
In his words, there are foreign investors from India, China and Russia, but the Russian investors who used to mine in Iran return to Russia now.
"The Ministry of Industries, Mine and Trade's economic commission has asked for a month to calculate the mining tariff in last Iranian year [started March 21, 2018], and after twelve months the tariff is announced; it is terrible and will harm the private sector," he added.
In his view, the approach is biased and the private sector will not accept it.
Iranian government has approved the power exports rate for crypto currency recently and appointed the Ministry of Energy as the responsible agent to determine the rate issuing license for mining.
The country's Customs Administration has announced new tariff regulations on crypto currency mining hardware imports. Iran had formally recognized mining as an industry in 2018, but there are concerns about power consumption creating obstacles for crypto currencies.