Iran Shuts Down Two Crypto Mining Factories
With Bitcoin recently topping the $10,000 mark again, cryptocurrency mining does appear to be making something of a solid comeback. I mean, in fairness, for many it never went away. Certainly not for those who have invested a lot of money into creating mining factories.
In a report via the BBC, however, Iran has reportedly just seized over 1,000 mining machines (effectively shutting down two factories) due to them causing a huge power spike.
Power Spike
In the report, it has been suggested that with both factories opening recently, Iran saw their national power output requirements spike by 7% in just a single month! The two individual sites are believed to have drawn around 1 megawatt of power. This is, in electric terms, an absolutely colossal figure!
How big? Well, (pending some maths (which is probably wrong)) it is about the same that would be needed to run a standard home for 100 years! Yes, these factories drew more in that single month than you’ll probably use in your entire lifetime!
What Do We Think?
Cryptocurrency mining does place a rather heavy load on a PC. Particularly so when multiple graphics cards are used in the process. Factories, however, with literal banks of graphics cards require a huge amount of electricity to operate. With the increased investment interest in various ‘coins’, however, such factories have popped up all over the world trying to make money. It does, however, carry something of a problem that they clearly place an immediate and significant drain on local power sources. A problem that is clearly having significant issues on countries who are still working out their infrastructure.
If nothing else, however, I do like the idea of these factories being converted to a coin meter. You know, dropping in a pound to fire up the entire factory for maybe half a second.
On the plus side though, with the seizure of goods, maybe Iran will have a few nice graphics cards to put on eBay! You never know!
What do you think? Do you mine cryptocurrency? Are you surprised at the amount of power it requires? – Let us know in the comments!
