The post The Iran Conflict Is Testing Bitcoin Miners appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Bitcoin The U.S.-Israel strike campaign against Iran that began on February 28 sent Brent crude past $100 a barrel and froze tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Key Takeaways Only 8-10% of Bitcoin’s global hashrate sits in oil-sensitive grids; the other ~90% is largely insulated from the crude price shock The real miner risk is Bitcoin’s price – not electricity bills – as geopolitical stress pushes capital out of risk assets Iran’s mining capacity has effectively gone dark, but the network’s difficulty adjustment absorbs the hit automatically Public miners are racing to repurpose their infrastructure for AI/HPC workloads, with over $65B in contracts already signed Energy markets are still digesting the fallout. For Bitcoin miners, the instinct is to worry about power bills. That instinct is mostly wrong. The Cost Side Is Largely a Non-Story Crude oil barely touches the electricity that runs Bitcoin mining. According to a new report from Hashrate Index, the hashrate heatmap for Q1 2026 makes the geography plain: the United States leads with 37.5% of global hashrate (400 EH/s), followed by Russia at 16.4% and China at 11.7%. Paraguay runs almost entirely on Itaipu hydroelectric. Ethiopia is over 90% hydro. Kazakhstan, Norway, Iceland – none of these grids move meaningfully in step with crude. Even in the U.S., where some marginal correlation between oil prices and industrial electricity rates exists, that correlation runs between 0.1 and 0.3. Statistically detectable, practically marginal. And where transmission does occur, it moves slowly through utility rate-setting cycles – months, not days. The genuinely exposed cohort is the Gulf states. The UAE (3.1%, 33 EH/s) and Oman (3.0%, 32 EH/s) operate grids powered primarily by natural gas derived from oil production. Add Iran’s estimated 9 EH/s and smaller contributors across Kuwait and Qatar, and total oil-sensitive hashrate lands around…

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Filed under: News - @ March 13, 2026 2:29 pm