Bitcoin uptick in Iran/Middle east?

[julz]

Over the past couple of weeks, I've noticed a few more nodes appearing in Iran on the blockchain 48hr node map: http://blockchain.info/nodes-globe?series=48hrs
(Also a few more on the Arabian peninsula than there used to be.)
A month or 2 back - it was rare to see a dot in Iran

It's nice to see Bitcoin worming it's way into new territory. (uptake in Africa still seems glacial though)


Anyone have any other news/info regarding Bitcoin penetration/publicity in Iran?

[kiba]

Would be great if you provide a history of the matter so we can verify for ourselves that it's a trend, and not just a few "uptick".

edit: fixed missing not.

[Spekulatius]

http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/ says 9 hosts currently connected from Iran. Thats as many as Puerto Rico or Peru has.

You would expect ideal conditions for bitcoin in Iran, but there lacks to be any opportunity to buy bitcoin for Iranis in the first place. Not even via UKash and Nordic Bitcoin (pretty much everywhere else around the Middle East) you could aquire any from Iran. Apart from that I think USD or Gold, etc. are much more feasible way to convert Rials.

[julz]

Would be great if you provide a history of the matter so we can verify for ourselves that it's a trend, and just a few "uptick".

Well I don't have a history - so yes it's very anecdotal. I too would like to see a more serious analysis.

[kokojie]

What does the bars mean?

[Herodes]

What about the following:

Somebody make a computer system that is fully charged by heat, solar or some other creative way of making electricity. This would make for a running computer system. Then you'd only need an internet connection, which could be through sattelite, or through cellular. Now, installing bitcoin on such a machine means that bitcoin could reach out anywhere, and imagine, even a rural town in Africa, could now have a connection to the internet and running bitcoin. Then some kids in this town could learn to program, create graphics etc on a computer, and get paid for it in bitcoins, then they could order stuff to their home with the money they made, or if there was a local exchanger, they could get it cash in hand in their local currency. Even very small tasks that pays very little would be attractive for these people, as 1 dollar for them is far much more than 1 dollar for most americans for instance.

As we know, a lot of kenyans are really good at running, because they run to school from they're little, and they know if the become a really good runner, they can feed their entire town, therefore they're supermotivated and train harder and longer than everybody else, and becomes a lot better as well. Imagine that some kid in a rural african town knew he could feed his entire family if he became a good programmer, even a few dollars a week, would make a huge difference to his family. Heck, there could even be 'tech town' in the darkest areas of Africa, given proper education. As we know, there's no shortage of eagerness to learn among most of those kids.

To have a larger impact, an organization, could even select one kid from each village, and send him to school in South Africa for a few years, then when he comes back, he becomes the local computer wizz and can teach the rest of the kids and adults about computers in his home town.

I don't know how much such a thing would cost, but if someone wanted to do it, it could be pretty doable.

And the Idea could apply to anywhere in the world with lack of connectivity and poor people. Imagine what 1 dollar can do for you in the rural areas of Afghanistan for instance.

[Spekulatius]

What about the following:

Somebody make a computer system that is fully charged by heat, solar or some other creative way of making electricity. This would make for a running computer system. Then you'd only need an internet connection, which could be through sattelite, or through cellular. Now, installing bitcoin on such a machine means that bitcoin could reach out anywhere, and imagine, even a rural town in Africa, could now have a connection to the internet and running bitcoin. Then some kids in this town could learn to program, create graphics etc on a computer, and get paid for it in bitcoins, then they could order stuff to their home with the money they made, or if there was a local exchanger, they could get it cash in hand in their local currency. Even very small tasks that pays very little would be attractive for these people, as 1 dollar for them is far much more than 1 dollar for most americans for instance.

As we know, a lot of kenyans are really good at running, because they run to school from they're little, and they know if the become a really good runner, they can feed their entire town, therefore they're supermotivated and train harder and longer than everybody else, and becomes a lot better as well. Imagine that some kid in a rural african town knew he could feed his entire family if he became a good programmer, even a few dollars a week, would make a huge difference to his family. Heck, there could even be 'tech town' in the darkest areas of Africa, given proper education. As we know, there's no shortage of eagerness to learn among most of those kids.

To have a larger impact, an organization, could even select one kid from each village, and send him to school in South Africa for a few years, then when he comes back, he becomes the local computer wizz and can teach the rest of the kids and adults about computers in his home town.

I don't know how much such a thing would cost, but if someone wanted to do it, it could be pretty doable.

And the Idea could apply to anywhere in the world with lack of connectivity and poor people. Imagine what 1 dollar can do for you in the rural areas of Afghanistan for instance.

[keystroke]

I was in Iran two months ago visiting a friend. It was an absolutely amazing time (the people are wonderful and detest their government, my friend had gotten a visa to move to the US which is why I decided to finally visit; it was now or never). When I was there it was 20,000 Rial to the dollar - a few weeks prior I believe it had been 12,000. Right now it is almost 25,000. So Iran is experiencing massive inflation. Probably as a result of EU oil sanctions.

BTW if you look up Rial prices online you have to make sure to get the actual street rate - I believe there are 3 different exchange rates and only the worst one is what normal people can actually get. Anyway, a great reason for Bitcoin to take hold in Iran. I sort of wanted to try running the client there but didn't want to get my friend in trouble It was rather ironic - we had a WiMax connection but it was severely rate limited!

[trout]

I'd imagine any sane person running a bitcoin client in Iran would do it through tor.
So those 9  or whatever points are probably not telling you much about btc adoption.

[Elwar]

(the people are wonderful and detest their government, my friend had gotten a visa to move to the US which is why I decided to finally visit; it was now or never).

From one oppressive government to another...

at least he is used to hating his government, he'll fit in well here

[keystroke]

(the people are wonderful and detest their government, my friend had gotten a visa to move to the US which is why I decided to finally visit; it was now or never).

From one oppressive government to another...

at least he is used to hating his government, he'll fit in well here

I know, I was thinking the same thing. Our government is oppressive in different ways which are less obvious to many people though. In Iran it is very overt. Although I would say it is pretty out in the open here too... But yea, everywhere people have ways of getting around the laws. I don't think Tor was working well but we had a VPN. And of course the girls to some extent violate the dress code, everyone has illegal satellite TV, etc.

[giszmo]

I was in Iran two months ago visiting a friend. It was an absolutely amazing time (the people are wonderful and detest their government, my friend had gotten a visa to move to the US which is why I decided to finally visit; it was now or never). When I was there it was 20,000 Rial to the dollar - a few weeks prior I believe it had been 12,000. Right now it is almost 25,000. So Iran is experiencing massive inflation. Probably as a result of EU oil sanctions.

Yes, exchange rates are slightly hard to find. I'm surprised. Anyway I remember last year in August I counted 10,000IRR as 1USD.

BTW if you look up Rial prices online you have to make sure to get the actual street rate - I believe there are 3 different exchange rates and only the worst one is what normal people can actually get. Anyway, a great reason for Bitcoin to take hold in Iran. I sort of wanted to try running the client there but didn't want to get my friend in trouble It was rather ironic - we had a WiMax connection but it was severely rate limited!

My problem with bitcoin was censorship – but not the Iranian censorship. The US-censorship. Many Bitcoin-resources are hosted on servers that don't export to rouge states. Else I'm pretty sure Iranis would not get into trouble for running a bitcoin node. What I did was hosted wallets.

It would actually have been much more comfortable to travel with bitcoin as there were no ATMs that work with western banks so as a tourist you have to enter Iran with cash and people know that.

[Herodes]

How's the climate for running encrypted traffic on Iranian network ?

If someone uses a webwallet to access bitcoin, over https, or running ssh into a linux host somewhere, how could this get them into troubble ?

[stepkrav]

How's the climate for running encrypted traffic on Iranian network ?

If someone uses a webwallet to access bitcoin, over https, or running ssh into a linux host somewhere, how could this get them into troubble ?

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-September/025648.html

[Herodes]

How's the climate for running encrypted traffic on Iranian network ?

If someone uses a webwallet to access bitcoin, over https, or running ssh into a linux host somewhere, how could this get them into troubble ?

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2012-September/025648.html

"Because of the release of an anti-islam videos about prophet Muhammad
on Youtube, which is owned by Google, *The People* have asked for these
sites to be blocked! So we have decided to Block Google and Gmail
service until further notice."

I'd like to see a democratic vote of the people of Iran whether they'd like to have their e-mail blocked over this.

A Halal-internet would never work. It would have to be cut off from the rest of the internet. How can IT-companies work from Iran, and besides, there's far too much traffic to police everything, and there would be far too many users to punish.

Slowing down SSL ? I mean, come on, all serious businesses, esp. so in the financial sector uses crypto to secure communication to their sites. If there was a rule that only in-country sites would be allowed to use SSL-certificates, this would effectively put all of Iran behind the rest of the world in regards to using international services on the Internet.

The Internet has come to stay, and there's nothing the Iranian government can do about it. The sooner they realize this, the better.

The Internet is the best thing that ever happened for freedom, communication, democracy and activism.

[btctalk]

I know this is kind of an old topic to post on but there are some updates on this

I'd like to see a democratic vote of the people of Iran whether they'd like to have their e-mail blocked over this.

A Halal-internet would never work. It would have to be cut off from the rest of the internet. How can IT-companies work from Iran, and besides, there's far too much traffic to police everything, and there would be far too many users to punish.

Slowing down SSL ? I mean, come on, all serious businesses, esp. so in the financial sector uses crypto to secure communication to their sites. If there was a rule that only in-country sites would be allowed to use SSL-certificates, this would effectively put all of Iran behind the rest of the world in regards to using international services on the Internet.

The Internet has come to stay, and there's nothing the Iranian government can do about it. The sooner they realize this, the better.

The Internet is the best thing that ever happened for freedom, communication, democracy and activism.

The thing about internet is iran is that till now it's internet being blacklisted and what the government has in mind (and hopefully fails) is to have a whitelisted internet for the users as there would be intranet sites and some others allowed.

main point is that even if the whole internet is down, there would be no non-functionality or any errors in governmental work as they don't use it as much as the normal people do.

Like the google codes and sourceforge blocking Iran, I don't think there would be any mollas or any one that has problem with USA using these services, only technicals and normal people doing normal jobs installing things on linux would have problems with files hosted on these servers.

I used bitcoin a while ago in Iran and the main problem was downloading the block chain. I'm thinking of hosting a compressed sign version of the block chain and update it once in a while to solve this issue. I've done this for litecoin as a beta project cause the size is smaller than bitcoin block chain. but the compression could really do the job, the size went from 1.1 GB to 300 MB.

[btctalk]

by the way the new price is 32,000 rials (3,200 tomans) for USD.
 

[sethsethseth]

It's impossible for the currency to take off when you can't exchange it easily.  The are very few ways to get it into the country.  Foreign nationals living in Iran can trade bitcoins to people for their expenses, or Iranians can sell digital goods and services for bitcoin, as artist Mohammad Rafigh is doing.  It's the same deal with Argentina.

[Stephen Gornick]

I see a post describing an exchange, Coinava, now in Iran:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=256445.0