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How the ‘Hamster’ Cryptocurrency Craze Took Over Iran Ahead of Presidential Elections
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Taxi drivers and motorcyclists type furiously on their cell phones as they wait at red lights in the Iranian capital during an early June heat wave. Some pedestrians in Tehran are doing the same. They all believe they can get rich.
The object of their rapt attention? The “Hamster Kombat” app.
Aside from the broader cryptocurrency craze, the app’s rise in Iran highlights a harsher truth facing the Islamic Republic ahead of Friday’s presidential election that will replace a delayed one. President Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash in May: an economy hampered by Western sanctions, persistently high inflation and a lack of jobs.
Also as presidential candidates make promises about restore the country’s economyIranians, who were heard about bitcoin for yearsnow they are flocking to this app in the pure hope that it will one day bear fruit, without knowing much about who is behind it.
“It’s a sign of desperation, honestly,” said Amir Rashidi, director of digital rights and security at Miaan Group and an expert on Iran. It’s about “trying to hold on to anything you have a little hope that might one day turn into something precious.”
Those able to divest from holdings in Iran’s beleaguered currency, the rial, have been buying propertyart, vehiclesprecious metals and other tangible assets following the collapse of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
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At the time of the agreement, the exchange rate was 32,000 rials for 1 dollar. Today it approaches 580,000 rials to the dollar – and many have found that the value of their bank accounts, pension funds and other holdings has been weakened by years of rapid depreciation.
Meanwhile, prices of fruit and vegetables have increased by 50% compared to last year, while the price of meat has increased by 70%. The cost of a shared taxi ride, common in the Iranian capital, has almost doubled. Rides on Tehran’s subway, still the cheapest option for the city’s commuters, also increased by about 30%.
“Since morning I have had three visitors in my shop, none of them bought anything,” said Mohammad Reza Tabrizi, who runs a clothing store in central Tehran. “Most customers prefer to buy from street vendors or used items in other places.”
In underground passages and other areas of the city, street vendors sell almost anything they can get their hands on. It is this desperate environment that has seen increased public interest in cryptocurrencies and mobile games that offer coins.
The proliferation of smartphones in Iran, as well as the relatively low cost of mobile phone service compared to other nations, makes access to apps like “Hamster Kombat” attractive.
The app is accessed via the Telegram messaging app, which remains popular in Iran despite authorities’ efforts to block access. It works like an incremental or “clicker” game: users repeatedly click on an object or complete repetitive tasks to earn points.
In “Hamster Kombat,” users believe they can access a supposed cryptocurrency associated with the game that has not yet been publicly traded.
In an email, people describing themselves as the game’s developers declined to answer questions about their identities or business plans, but insisted that they were “not offering any cryptocurrency in the game.”
“We are educating our audience about cryptocurrencies through game mechanics,” the email states.
However, the game resembles another app that once offered cryptocurrency to Iranians – and it seems that just the promise of what could be free money could drive some Iranians to distraction.
Online jokes show a man touching a tombstone as if it were a cell phone. Another uses a massage gun to quickly poke an on-screen hamster.
But the public’s interest in the game has also attracted the attention of the authorities.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, deputy head of Iran’s military, described the app as part of the West’s “soft war” against Iran’s theocracy ahead of the election.
“One of the characteristics of the enemy’s soft war is the game of ‘Hamster,’” Sayyari said, according to state news agency IRNA. He theorized that the “enemy” is popularizing the game so that people will be distracted and not “pay attention to the plans of the presidential candidates.”
“Then (people) fail to choose the best candidates,” Sayyari said. Hardline experts in Iran have expressed similar views.
The JameJam newspaper, published on Iranian state television, also warned that the ever-increasing interest in the game was a sign of “the dream of getting rich overnight and achieving wealth effortlessly.” He said players range from “builders, mechanics and refrigerator repairers to colleagues and classmates at university.”
“A society that instead of working and trying to succeed and earn money relies on these games and looks for shortcuts and windfalls, gradually loses the culture of effort and entrepreneurship and shifts towards convenience,” the newspaper said, without recognizing that the country’s economic problems were potentially driving interest in the app.
The app has even caught the attention of a 97-year-old Shiite religious scholar, Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, known for his fatwas declaring things “haram” or “forbidden” from his office in the holy city of Qomthe Iranian center of Shia learning, full of religious schools and venerated shrines.
Calling the cryptocurrency “the source of a lot of abuse,” Shirazi said people should not use the “Hamster Kombat” app or similar ones involving bitcoin.
Iran is not alone in having concerns about the game.
Authority within Ukraine is involved in a devastating war with Iran-armed Russia since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, warned that user data remains stored in Russia and could potentially put it at risk.
Then there is the broader risk of exposure to malware as consumers in Iran often cannot legally purchase new software or even access legitimate app stores. They also address the risk of state-sponsored hackers targeting them for their political opinions.
Meanwhile, as the election campaign continues in Iran, presidential candidates are using Instagram, X and Telegram, all services previously banned by the theocracy after a series of protests across the country.
“As long as you are able to pay the price, everything is available,” said Rashidi, the Iran expert.
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Karimi reported from Tehran, Iran.