U.S. Strikes on Iran Spark Debate Over Bitcoin Hashrate and Market Stability
Bitcoin mining in Iran is again within the highlight after a viral X put up on February 27 claimed the nation runs a $1 billion operation that could possibly be worn out.
The debate has break up crypto observers, with some warning of a short lived hashrate shock and others dismissing the claims as exaggerated concern, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
Iran’s Mining Footprint and the Strike Scenario
The dialogue started when impartial analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera posted that Iran mines Bitcoin at a theoretical value of $1,320 per BTC utilizing closely sponsored electrical energy and then promoting it on the present value close to $68,000 to extract what he described as a 50x gross margin.
He alleged that round 700,000 mining rigs eat roughly 2,000 megawatts every day, a lot of it tied to operations linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.
Perera tied the argument to sanctions, saying Bitcoin permits Iran to transform restricted power assets into liquid capital past the attain of SWIFT prohibitions.
A January 16 report by Chainalysis found that Iran’s complete crypto exercise exceeded $7.78 billion in 2025. Furthermore, the report mentioned addresses linked to IRGC facilitation networks obtained greater than $3 billion final yr, up from simply over $2 billion in 2024, and that exercise usually spiked throughout navy or political crises.
Nonetheless, critics shortly challenged the mining value assumptions, with analyst Dasha calling the $1,320 determine “100% pretend information,” arguing it depends on family electrical energy charges that can not be achieved in follow as a result of blackouts and shortages.
Hashrate Shocks Are Not New
The objections didn’t cease there, as miner ZynxBTC dismissed the priority totally:
“Even if Iran managed 5% of worldwide hashrate (it doesn’t), and it went offline, the community would proceed functioning usually.”
Recent U.S. occasions assist that argument. Earlier within the yr, the community continued working even after a extreme winter storm forced main Texas miners offline, pushing the hashrate down from 1.133 ZH/s to 690 EH/s in simply a few days.
However, Perera argued that grid failure differs from voluntary shutdown. According to his evaluation, with tensions brewing within the Middle East, a 7-to-10-day air marketing campaign focusing on Iranian navy infrastructure would seemingly collapse electrical energy technology by an estimated 30% to 50%.
He insisted that mining rigs require steady energy, and even transient outages might destroy lively operations. As such, he postulated {that a} strike on Iran’s already fragile grid might see the nation’s estimated 2% to five% share of the worldwide hashrate drop to zero inside days, triggering an issue adjustment that will prolong block occasions and quickly spike transaction charges. As CryptoPotato reported, the US and Israel have already launched strikes on Iran earlier right now.
Still, others argued that the Bitcoin community has withstood even bigger shocks, with researcher Furkan Yildirim noting that China eliminated greater than half of the worldwide hashrate in 2021, but the community quickly adjusted as miners relocated.
“An Iranian grid failure can be a rounding error by comparability,” he tweeted.
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