Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

[Ar558a]

Bitcoin miners in the Uk found stealing Electricity by Police. Thousands of Pounds of Electricity stolen.

 

Quotes

Quote

"It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up" - Sergeant Griffen of West Midlands Police

 

My thoughts

This is just the beginning, I have always said Crypto is just like drug dealing and here is an actual case of the police finding a mining setup that they thought was a Cannabis farm, stealing electricity to make a product that can be exchanged for money anonymously, and in this case that product is perfectly designed to allow criminals  to purchase illegal goods and services in an untraceable way. I'm sure we will see more and more of these stories popping up around the world. Hopefully more and more governments will follow China and make Crypto illegal (or at least very hard to trade) and then the price will drop out of the market and it will disappear

 

Sources

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-57280115

[GorujoCY]

This is the thing, is that mining with these like hundreds of gpus are legal, yet why not use your personals gaming rig graphics card with msi afterburner adjustment for increasing your gpu's lifespan, and just mine that way with one graphics card? I know farms make more hash rates and more profitability but this is what you end up with, Issues. Per say countries like USA will have no issues with it as their electricity can be rich, however it can have a noticeable impact if say we have miners in a small island like cyprus, but luckliy we most likely dont have many.
Also how do those miners even end up stealing electricity, why dont they just use their own or from what the building provides, i mean sure the KWh will be costed up but you get fairly profitable anyways, what's the point of stealing electricity right? Besides that crypto should not be banned, it's more like mining should be regulated and also countries should just explain consumers properly the risks of cryptocurrency and why you should trade very carefully (unlike India who are cough cough trying to lock down cryptocurrency trading and make their own like that's not how cryptocurrency works).

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to General Discussion

 

This hardly counts as tech news.

[StDragon]

13 minutes ago, GorujoCY said:

This is the thing, is that mining with these like hundreds of gpus are legal, yet why not use your personals gaming rig graphics card with msi afterburner adjustment for increasing your gpu's lifespan, and just mine that way with one graphics card?

Greed. Pure greed. That's the answer.

So much greed it involves theft... You can't rationalize with people like that. You apprehend them and bring them to court for judgement.

[TetraSky]

19 minutes ago, GorujoCY said:

Also how do those miners even end up stealing electricity, why dont they just use their own or from what the building provides, i mean sure the KWh will be costed up but you get fairly profitable anyways, what's the point of stealing electricity right?

It's relatively easy to steal electricity from the grid, they just need to bypass the electricity meter. Which almost anyone could do (though preferably leave that to a pro).
As for why... Well you've said it yourself. They save on the cost of electricity, meaning they make more out of crypto mining than they would if they had to pay for their electricity bill as well. So yeah.... Greed.

 

Ethereum moving to PoS instead PoW is good in my eyes, at least that will save a bit of energy and will stop this behavior.

[Ar558a]

4 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

-> Moved to General Discussion

 

This hardly counts as tech news.

How come? This is news about a tech based story (Crypto) thats on a recognised news site(bbc) ??

[XR6]

18 minutes ago, GorujoCY said:

Also how do those miners even end up stealing electricity, why dont they just use their own or from what the building provides, i mean sure the KWh will be costed up but you get fairly profitable anyways, what's the point of stealing electricity right?

Electricity is really expensive in the UK. Not profitable to mine crypto unless they steal power.

[GorujoCY]

1 minute ago, XR6 said:

Electricity is really expensive in the UK. Not profitable to mine crypto unless they steal power.

I see, then yeah probably banning mining in the UK just might be the right thing but I still stand by my statement that mining in general should just be regulated to prevent accidents like these

[TetraSky]

3 minutes ago, Ar558a said:

How come? This is news about a tech based story (Crypto) thats on a recognised news site(bbc) ??

Mods don't like crypto news, it always bring about discord among members. That and it's "nothing new", this sort of things have been happening for a long time. There would be dozens of new tech news posts every day about something-crypto related otherwise, like when Bitcoin crashes... When it went back up... and crashed again.... and back up ....

[Ar558a]

3 minutes ago, XR6 said:

Electricity is really expensive in the UK. Not profitable to mine crypto unless they steal power.

I pay about £0.18 Kwh ($0.25/Kwh) + Daily standing charge of another £0.25ish

[LogicalDrm]

2 minutes ago, Ar558a said:

How come? This is news about a tech based story (Crypto) thats on a recognised news site(bbc) ??

Just one aspect of being tech doesn't make the cut. This is about company dealing with tech found to be connected or doing criminal activity. Whats the Tech News part of it? Just crypto? Not enough. You have also framed it to be rather one-sided, which could turn this into crapshoot fairly quickly.

[TetraSky]

Just now, Ar558a said:

I pay about £0.18 Kwh ($0.25/Kwh) + Daily standing charge of another £0.25ish

And I pay half of that in Quebec.

So yeah, expensive.

[Ar558a]

1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

Mods don't like crypto news, it always bring about discord among members. That and it's "nothing new", this sort of things have been happening for a long time. There would be dozens of new tech news posts every day otherwise, like when Bitcoin crashes... When it went back up... and crashed again.... and back up ....

Hmm. Supressing news on any topic sounds dodgy to me. 

[LogicalDrm]

Just now, Ar558a said:

Hmm. Supressing news on any topic sounds dodgy to me. 

Your topic has not been suppressed, just moved out of one section to another. The subject is news, but not tech news as it doesn't have major or even minor implications to tech field.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

3 hours ago, GorujoCY said:

Also how do those miners even end up stealing electricity, why dont they just use their own or from what the building provides, i mean sure the KWh will be costed up but you get fairly profitable anyways, what's the point of stealing electricity right?

No, electricity is one of the biggest costs in any kind if 'data center', including mining, electricity us usually driving your HVAC systems as well (Though not necessarily)  Free electricity is a big money saver.

[tikker]

5 hours ago, Ar558a said:

This is just the beginning, I have always said Crypto is just like drug dealing and here is an actual case of the police finding a mining setup that they thought was a Cannabis farm, stealing electricity

And this is crypto's fault how? You've given your own counterargument: cannabis growers steal electricity as well. This needs to be put in context of global crypto use and then you see that crime is a small percentage.

5 hours ago, Ar558a said:

that can be exchanged for money anonymously

Crypto is not anonymous, only pseudononymous at best.

5 hours ago, Ar558a said:

and in this case that product is perfectly designed to allow criminals  to purchase illegal goods and services in an untraceable way.

Not unique to crypto and often wrong with regards to untraceability. Tonnes of illegal goods are bought in dollars, euros whatever your everyday money is. Furthermore, most cryptos are perfectly traceable. Every transaction of Bitcoin or Ethereum, for example, is recorded on the public ledger and can be verified and tracked by anyone. With tumblers or privacycoins a problem does arise, as they aim to make it more difficult or impossible to trace "coins". Still, the most untraceable way to deal is to buy in cold hard cash. If I give you $10k in cash, noone is any wiser. If I give you 10 BTC, it's forever and publicly set in stone that I gave 10 BTC to you. People also enjoy seeing large amounts move around so there are also twitter bots and what not dedicated to tracking large transfers, publicly announcing anything of interest. Intelligence agencies don't even need to do it themselves, we're already handing it to them on a silver platter haha.

5 hours ago, Ar558a said:

I'm sure we will see more and more of these stories popping up around the world. Hopefully more and more governments will follow China and make Crypto illegal (or at least very hard to trade) and then the price will drop out of the market and it will disappear

This is far from the first story to pop up. Sure it can do with some regulations, I think it needs some if it will ever be adopted, and mining needs to go, but in my opinion crypto has become the new pineapple on pizza.

 

5 hours ago, Ar558a said:

I pay about £0.18 Kwh ($0.25/Kwh) + Daily standing charge of another £0.25ish

Daily charge? Is that on top of a monthly subscription or instead of?

[IkeaGnome]

10 minutes ago, tikker said:

And this is crypto's fault how? You've given your own counterargument: cannabis growers steal electricity as well. This needs to be put in context of global crypto use and then you see that crime is a small percentage.

Crypto is not anonymous, only pseudononymous at best.

Not unique to crypto and often wrong with regards to untraceability. Tonnes of illegal goods are bought in dollars, euros whatever your everyday money is. Furthermore, most cryptos are perfectly traceable. Every transaction of Bitcoin or Ethereum, for example, is recorded on the public ledger and can be verified and tracked by anyone. With tumblers or privacycoins a problem does arise, as they aim to make it more difficult or impossible to trace "coins". Still, the most untraceable way to deal is to buy in cold hard cash. If I give you $10k in cash, noone is any wiser. If I give you 10 BTC, it's forever and publicly set in stone that I gave 10 BTC to you. People also enjoy seeing large amounts move around so there are also twitter bots and what not dedicated to tracking large transfers, publicly announcing anything of interest. Intelligence agencies don't even need to do it themselves, we're already handing it to them on a silver platter haha.

This is far from the first story to pop up. Sure it can do with some regulations, I think it needs some if it will ever be adopted, and mining needs to go, but in my opinion crypto has become the new pineapple on pizza.

Good luck. This has been explained to OP many times to no avail. 

[BuckGup]

How is this news? People steal electricity all the time

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, BuckGup said:

How is this news? People steal electricity all the time

It's probably just the large scale of it. "100 computer units" is large, but realistically that's 3-4 racks in a data center. These also aren't GPU miners, Antminers.

https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-s9-11-5th

 

Note how the S9's are "negative" value. So probably trying to recoup their costs by stealing electricity.

[RoseLuck462]

Will they have to give it back?

[12345678]

21 hours ago, Ar558a said:

 money anonymously, and in this case that product is perfectly designed to allow criminals  to purchase illegal goods and services in an untraceable way.

and so cash is, or gold, or thousands of other stuff, like giftcards or games the last two are perfectly designed for money laundering

21 hours ago, Ar558a said:

Hopefully more and more governments will follow China and make Crypto illegal (or at least very hard to trade) and then the price will drop out of the market and it will disappear

they can even ban it, but they have no way to enforce it. china isn't banning it, but restring exchangers, they were used to cashout more yuan in other fiats than they were afford to do

21 hours ago, Ar558a said:

 

 

[Moonzy]

12 hours ago, RoseLuck462 said:

Will they have to give it back?

You probably meant money

 

But the image of the miners getting on bicycles with dynamo to return the electricity used is more amusing so I'll stick to that

[Mling]

When I worked in Onehunga around 2005 we got super annoyed by police helicopters. Turns out they were busting cannabis operations in the area that were stealing electricity. Around that time I heard of quite a lot of commercial properties that were raided for drug manufacturing. Hey at least kids arn't robbing to feed a crypto habit.

[Ar558a]

It got on to TechLinked's Friday Tech News 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, CircleTech said:

Once new Cryptos come out that choose to mine with "proof-of-stake" as opposed to "proof-of-work",

Can you explain the difference? I mean specifically:  *what* will be used for "proof of stake"?

You mentioned rasperry pi, implying still some sort of computer being used, and what does that computer do specifically that speed doesnt matter as much?