DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — In the sweltering heat of early June, taxi drivers and bikers in Iran's capital frantically tap away at red lights. Pedestrians in Tehran do the same. They all believe they're on the road to riches.
What are they so keen to see? The Hamster Combat app.
Aside from the broader cryptocurrency boom, the app's rise in Iran highlights a harsher reality facing the country ahead of Friday's presidential election to decide who will succeed the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May: an economy crippled by Western sanctions, persistently high inflation and a shortage of jobs.
While presidential candidates promise to revive the country's economy, Iranians who have been hearing about Bitcoin for years are flocking to the app in the pure hope that they might one day benefit — without much knowledge of who is behind it.
“Frankly, this is a sign of desperation,” said Amir Rashidi, an Iran expert and director of digital rights and security at the Mian Group. “It's a way of holding on to anything, any little bit of hope that it might be worth something one day.”
Those able to exit holdings of Iran's beleaguered currency, the rial, have been buying hard assets such as property, art, cars and precious metals since the collapse of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
The exchange rate at the time of the transaction was 32,000 rials to the dollar. Today, it's closer to 580,000 rials to the dollar, and many have found their bank accounts, retirement funds and other assets eroded by years of steep depreciation.
Meanwhile, the prices of fruit and vegetables have risen 50 percent since last year, and meat prices have increased 70 percent. The cost of a shared taxi ride, common in the Iranian capital, has nearly doubled. Even fares for rides on the Tehran subway, which remains the cheapest form of transportation for the city's commuters, have increased by about 30 percent.
“Three customers have come to my shop since the morning, but none of them bought anything,” said Mohammad Reza Tabrizi, who runs a clothing store in central Tehran. “Most customers prefer to buy from peddlers or second-hand goods elsewhere.”
In the underpass and elsewhere in the city, peddlers sell just about anything they can get their hands on. The desperate environment has sparked interest in virtual currencies and mobile games that offer coins.
The rapid adoption of smartphones in Iran and the relatively low cost of mobile service compared to other countries make access to apps like Hamster Combat attractive.
The app is accessed through the messaging app Telegram, which remains popular in Iran despite attempts by Iranian authorities to block access to it. The app works like an incremental or “clicker” game, in which users earn points by repeatedly clicking on objects or completing repetitive tasks.
Hamster Combat believes that users may be able to access a game-related cryptocurrency that is not yet publicly traded.
In an email, the people claiming to be developers of the game declined to answer questions about their identities or business plans but insisted that “we do not offer virtual currency in the game.”
“We educate our audience about cryptocurrency through game mechanics,” the email claimed.
Still, the game is similar to other apps that have offered cryptocurrency to Iranians in the past, and the promise of free money seems to be enough to drive some Iranians crazy.
Online jokes include one man hitting a gravestone as if it were a mobile phone, and another man using a massage gun to rapidly hit an on-screen hamster.
But the public interest in the game has also attracted the attention of authorities.
Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Habibollah Sayyari, said the app was part of a Western “soft war” against Iran's theocracy ahead of the elections.
“One of the features of the enemy's soft war is the 'Hamster' game,” Sayyari said, according to the state-run Iranian News Agency. He speculated that the “enemy” was popularizing the game to distract people “so that they do not pay attention to the plans of the presidential candidate.”
“Then they will not be able to choose the best candidate,” Sayyari said. Hardline Iranian experts echoed similar sentiments.
The daily Jamekjam, published by Iranian state television, also warned that growing interest in the game reflects “dreams of getting rich overnight and achieving wealth without effort,” saying players “range from builders, mechanics and refrigerator repairmen to university colleagues and classmates.”
“A society that turns to such games for shortcuts and windfall gains, rather than working to succeed and earn money, is gradually losing the culture of hard work and entrepreneurship and moving towards convenience,” the paper said, without acknowledging that the country's economic crisis may be driving interest in the app.
The app caught the attention of Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, a 97-year-old Shiite religious scholar known for issuing fatwas, or religious commands, declaring things “haram,” or “forbidden,” from his office in the holy city of Qom, Iran's center of Shiite learning and a collection of religious schools and revered shrines.
Shirazi called cryptocurrency a “source of a lot of abuse” and said people should not use the “Hamster Combat” app or similar apps related to Bitcoin.
Iran are not the only ones with concerns about the match.
Ukrainian authorities, who have been locked in a devastating war with Russia armed by Iran since Moscow's 2022 invasion, have warned that user data remains stored in Russia, potentially putting users at risk.
What's more, Iranian consumers often cannot legally purchase new software or access legitimate app stores, exposing them to a wider range of malware infections and the risk of being targeted by state-sponsored hackers because of their political views.
Meanwhile, as Iran's election campaign continues, presidential candidates are using Instagram, X and Telegram – all services that were banned by the theocracy after nationwide protests.
“You can have it all as long as you pay the price,” said Rashidi, the Iran expert.
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Karimi reported from Tehran, Iran.
