A deputy head of Iran’s state electricity company Tavanir said on Wednesday that authorities had discovered and confiscated some 252,000 illegal cryptomining machines amid a surge in whistleblowing that has been rewarded with cash.

According to a report by Press TV, Mohammad Allahdad said that the confiscated machines could have been responsible for an electricity consumption of 4 gigawatts (GW).

“That’s equal to usage in three to four small provinces in Iran,” said Allahdad in an interview with the national TV.

He said that the Iranian Energy Ministry hopes the clampdown on illegal cryptomining could help it cope with a projected record demand for electricity in July and August.

The official said that the government has paid some 80 billion rials ($0.1 million) in rewards to whistleblowers who have helped identify the locations of illegal cryptomining machines.

However, Allahdad called for even tougher penalties to be imposed on owners and operators of the machines, saying that could discourage the misuse of subsidized electricity for cryptomining.

Tavanir and Iranian judicial authorities announced in January that they had intensified their crackdown on illegal cryptimining amid rising demand for electricity in the country that stretched power plants to the limits.

A report published in February showed that 15,000 cryptomining machines had been discovered in the 10 months before that, adding that some 13,000 of those devices had been destroyed.

Estimates at the time suggested that cryptomining was responsible for nearly 0.8 GW of electricity demand in Iran, with authorities saying that each cryptomining machine’s consumption was equivalent to the electricity usage of 10 households.

MNA