This is exactly why I stopped looking at mining purely through an energy-cost lens years ago. The economics only make sense if you own the coins you mine—otherwise you're just selling hash power to a government at a discount. Iran's licensed miners are essentially operating as currency conversion services for the Central Bank, not building actual Bitcoin infrastructure. The real mining story has always been about jurisdictions where miners can be sovereign participants in the network, not state-controlled operators. Places with higher electricity costs but actual legal frameworks end up more resilient long-term because the operators have real incentives to stay online and secure the network, rather than just extracting value for sanctions evasion.
This is exactly why I stopped looking at mining purely through an energy-cost lens years ago. The economics only make sense if you own the coins you mine—otherwise you're just selling hash power to a government at a discount. Iran's licensed miners are essentially operating as currency conversion services for the Central Bank, not building actual Bitcoin infrastructure. The real mining story has always been about jurisdictions where miners can be sovereign participants in the network, not state-controlled operators. Places with higher electricity costs but actual legal frameworks end up more resilient long-term because the operators have real incentives to stay online and secure the network, rather than just extracting value for sanctions evasion.