ViraMiner is an Iranian company that sets up Bitcoin mining farms and maintains them. It has two offices in western Tehran, located in separate adj
ViraMiner is an Iranian company that sets up Bitcoin mining farms and maintains them. It has two offices in western Tehran, located in separate adjacent buildings.
When Magazine visits, its old office is busy on a Monday afternoon. This place is now officially dedicated to its repairing services alone.
Mining devices are stored upon each other in yellow, green and red shelves raised against a wall facing the company secretary’s desk. Across the entrance, there is a busy repair room where devices are opened. Power supplies, hash boards and control boards are passed around, discussed and modified.
Bitmain Antminer and MicroBT Whatsminer are a specialty for repairs by the company, whose personnel are all young tech enthusiasts. Mina Jahanbakhshi, one of the three female employees present there, gives a tour around the office and leads me to a room next to the repair section, which is being prepared for new employees who have been hired to help the company keep up with its growing demand.
Electricity consumption peak in Iran’s hot summer has just passed and a presidential ban on power-intensive crypto mining has recently been lifted. The company, therefore, expects busy days ahead.
White new desks are put next to a wall toward the end of the quiet room and the extra repairing equipment has yet to arrive.
“The waiting period for repairing equipment is currently two weeks,” she says. “We are adding new personnel to speed up the repairing process.”
Mining has grown significantly in Iran over the past few years.
“People are getting more familiar with mining,” Jahanbakhshi says. “It’s an interesting and attractive field. It is growing worldwide, and likewise in Iran.”
Small community
As another sign of a growing business, the company is preparing an additional office in a separate building nearby. The air in the under-construction workplace is teeming the odor of fresh paint.
Omid Alavi, ViraMiner’s CEO, is having a meeting a few steps from construction workers doing plasterwork on the walls.
There is no place to have an interview, so we move to the neighboring apartment where an office for another company is being prepared. Alavi exchanges a few jokes with the people in the neighboring office. A person unfamiliar with their relationship would assume the two offices belong to the same company.
“These are our competitors,” Alavi says jokingly as we walk past a desk across the entrance. “The crypto community is really small.”
Alavi tells Magazine that he established the company with two other partners back in 2016.
“In 2017-2018, the Bitcoin hype gained momentum. Many got interested in cryptocurrency and this led to the building of many mining farms in Iran. We put our focus on the setting up and the maintenance of the farms. We generally became a specialized company in this sector.”
Despite ups and downs, ViraMiner has seen overall growth in recent years.
“In the past four to five years, the number of our personnel has increased to nearly 70. We created a specialized repair services unit, where 16-17 trained personnel repair mining equipment,” he says.
“We had some of our staff do courses in China’s Bitmain Technologies Ltd and MicroBT. We also invited experts from China to train our staff here.”
ViraMiner was initially established as an underground company. But, in 2019, when mining was recognized by the authorities as an industry, Alavi and his colleagues received permits to be an authorized company active in the field.
“Simultaneously, we have tried to help the government make regulations for mining,” he says.
According to the Iranian Mining Association, two-thirds of Iran’s Bitcoin mining is unauthorized.
Government supervision
Iran accounts for an estimated 4.5% to 7% of the global Bitcoin hash rate. The extensive reach of the industry has prompted the Iranian government to increase its supervision of mining.
However, the government has concerns with the industry due to the sector’s consumption of Iran’s heavily subsidized electricity, as well as a sneaking suspicion that illegal miners are evading taxes and duties.
Moreover, the government has shown a desire to turn mining into an opportunity to compensate, at least in part, for an almost-complete embargo on its banking and oil industries due to international sanctions.
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said in May that Iran’s Bitcoin production had hit revenues close to $1 billion a year at the country’s then-level of mining.
The former head of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) Abdonasser Hemmati said in March that authorized farms will need to deposit their mined Bitcoin on exchanges specified by the CBI. Importers can then use Bitcoin as a source of foreign currency to pay for the goods purchased from overseas sellers.
But, despite many efforts to make laws efficient and clear, the regulations have still failed to…
cointelegraph.com