The community is buzzing about "Iranian war flames crippling Bitcoin hash rate," but analysts dismiss it: accounting for less than 1%, it's hardly noticeable.

After the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, social media platforms were flooded with apocalyptic claims such as “5% of the world’s computing power will vanish overnight” and “billions of dollars worth of BTC will be dumped.” However, several mining industry analysts have directly refuted these claims: Iran’s actual share of hash rate may be less than 1%, and even a complete disruption would not shake the security of the Bitcoin network. This article is based on Callan Quinn’s “Iran Conflict Not Major Concern For Bitcoin Mining Hashrate, Say Experts”, translated and edited by Dongqu.
(Background: Iran announces “cryptocurrency ban at night,” Israeli hackers destroy Nobitex’s $100 million, igniting on-chain conflict)
(Additional context: How Iran, after forty years of sanctions, is rebuilding financial channels through crypto)

Multiple research personnel and operators in the mining industry agree: even if the conflict in Iran escalates, the global Bitcoin mining network is unlikely to be significantly impacted. These statements directly counter the widespread panic on social media—claims that hash rate will face catastrophic destruction and Bitcoin will be heavily dumped.

“I don’t think this poses a threat to the Bitcoin network,” Wolfie Zhao, head of research at mining firm TheMinerMag, told Decrypt. He dismissed the idea that “Iran’s power outages will materially impact Bitcoin,” noting that while some individual mining farms might face short-term disruptions, their scale is far from the historic events like China’s全面退出挖矿 in 2021.

Meanwhile, on social media, a disaster scenario is spreading: war could lead to the collapse of Iran’s entire mining industry, forcing billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin into the market, with hundreds of thousands of mining machines shutting down simultaneously.

Bitcoin prices experienced a dip and rebound over the weekend. On X (formerly Twitter), some users loudly warned that Iran’s power grid failure could affect 2% to 5% of global hash rate. One post on Saturday claimed: “If the regime falls, billions of dollars worth of BTC will be dumped, 5% of global hash rate will vanish overnight, and 427,000 mining machines will all stop.”

However, on-chain data tells a different story. According to CoinWarz, after the initial US and Israel airstrikes on February 28, Bitcoin’s total network hash rate was about 986.19 EH/s; it then rose to a peak of 1.14 ZH/s on March 1, and by Tuesday morning, had fallen slightly below 1 ZH/s—meaning hash rate actually increased rather than decreased.

On Dastan’s prediction market platform Myriad, a subsidiary of Decrypt, users estimate a 51% chance that the Iranian regime will fall before October, a nearly 20 percentage point increase over the weekend.

Although Iran legalized crypto mining as early as 2019, the industry has long faced structural bottlenecks: unstable electricity supply, high equipment import costs, complex regulations—all continuously suppressing industry growth.

Ethan Vera, COO of Luxor Technology, straightforwardly states that even if Iran’s mining activities cease entirely, the impact on Bitcoin block production and network security would be minimal. Iran’s actual share of global hash rate is widely estimated to be in the low single digits, with Vera’s own estimate being even more conservative—less than 1%.

“Even if there is a disruption, it won’t cause significant fluctuations in block times, and it will have zero impact on Bitcoin network security,” he said firmly.

He further explained that Iran’s local mining landscape mainly consists of small private farms and a few long-established Chinese mining companies operating there.

Iran’s $77.8 billion shadow economy in crypto

Iran has already built a large-scale cryptocurrency ecosystem, serving as an alternative financial channel outside the US dollar system. Long under international sanctions, Iran has been almost completely cut off from the global US dollar clearing network, making cryptocurrencies a key tool for bypassing restrictions.

Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis reported in January that: “Iran’s cryptocurrency activity is highly correlated with domestic and international political events and military conflicts.” The report estimates that by 2025, Iran’s overall crypto economy could reach $7.78 billion, with a significant portion of the funds linked to government-related entities.

The recent military conflict has further accelerated capital flight. Blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic’s monitoring report revealed that within minutes after the initial US and Israel airstrikes, the amount of crypto assets transferred out of Iranian exchanges surged by 700%.