Ministry of energy officials said at the time that the country\u2019s power grid had become unstable as a result of increased mining of cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, media reports said last year that Iranian government officials were considering developing a domestic digital currency to counter US sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alireza Daliri of the Directorate for Scientific and Technological Affairs of the Presidential Office said a number of domestic knowledge-based companies were working over the project in cooperation with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The head of the company contracted by the CBI to design and develop a national digital currency said then a blockchain and cryptocurrency research lab had been set up in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blockchain is a digital ledger or database where transactions in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Iranian media reports, a state-backed national cryptocurrency backed by the local fiat unit, the rial, has already been developed but it has yet to be approved for use by the central bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran\u2019s currency was targeted by the first round of US sanctions imposed in May 2018 after President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under US pressures, the global banking network SWIFT has dropped Iran from its platform, making international financial settlements with the country almost impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blockchain and other digital ledgers holding cryptocurrency records process transactions without being controlled by any person or entity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US government has reportedly warned digital marketplaces that buy and sell bitcoin and companies that sell computers used to process bitcoin transactions to avoid providing services to Iranians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Iranian government has issued over 1,000 licenses for cryptocurrency mining in the country where there is potential for a crypto industry worth $8.5 billion, a report says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[70],"tags":[1526,1527,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranthisway.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}