Iran’s power company has issued a warning about power cuts caused by illegal cryptocurrency mining.

Iran’s state-owned electrical provider has warned that illegal bitcoin miners might trigger additional power outages this winter.

The power company claimed in an October 10 statement released by the official government news agency IRNA that illegal cryptocurrency mining will responsible for at least “10 percent of electrical disruptions this winter.”

According to the statement, illicit mining was responsible for 20% of summer outages.

Unlicensed bitcoin miners have been regularly accused by Iranian officials for consuming large quantities of electricity, depleting the power grid and increasing air pollution levels in several towns.

Because they employ banks of high-powered computers to try to solve complicated numerical riddles linked to international financial transactions, the activities represent a huge energy drain.

Police raids on “illegal farms” for cryptocurrencies have been reported by Iranian news outlets on a regular basis.

Elliptic, a blockchain analytics business, believes that Iran accounts for around 4.5 percent of worldwide bitcoin mining, allowing the nation to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency that may be used to circumvent US sanctions that have devastated the economy.