Cryptocurrencies — Hope for Iran
Until February of this year, Iran was the country that was the most sanctioned country in the world. Now only Russia is ahead of him. The Islamic state has been struggling with sanctions for a long time and has long been looking for ways to circumvent them. Despite the sanctions, Iran has placed an international order of $ 10 million in goods that will be covered with cryptocurrencies. The intention is to use cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange also in subsequent international trade agreements. And many more are planned, by the end of September, cryptocurrencies and smart contracts are to be widely used in trade with countries cooperating with Iran. Currently, these are China, the United Arab Emirates, India and Turkey.
The Islamic nation was prepared to use cryptocurrencies much earlier. The regulations regarding their widespread use have changed already in 2020. In the same year, Iran allowed 30 miners to mine cryptocurrencies. This year there are already 118 of them. The condition, however, is the resale of the mined coins to the Central Bank of Iran. Problems with the supply of electricity meant that the miners’ activity was temporarily suspended since last year. This is despite the fact that they have a much higher energy tariff than average users. It seems the Iranian government is more concerned with blackouts than with reduced coin mining. Interestingly, according to analysts, about 4.5% of all mined Bitcoins were obtained in Iran. This country is in the top ten countries with the highest hashrate, in short, with the computing power of the Bitcoin network.
The Islamic state, after all, sees its chances in cryptocurrencies to save the economy, which was on the verge of paralysis. And rightly so, because placing an international import order is a new phase of trade that will bypass the rules of the global financial system. North Korea also uses a similar method. Agreements have also been made with Venezuela, which is also subject to a number of sanctions. It is primarily about cooperation in the areas of oil and agriculture. It must be remembered that the sanctions were introduced to limit the possibilities of developing nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism. This involves the export of many goods and technologies to Iran.
The breakdown of the nuclear deal between Iran and the United States in 2018 resulted in the imposition of economic sanctions. The European Union is currently working on a new nuclear deal with Iran. Last week, the final text was presented, which was created after eleven months of talks. Both sides are optimistic and Tehran has long been declaring that it is ready to sign a new treaty. The representative of the US State Department confirmed that they are also able to reach an agreement.
