51–60 of 250 posts
"The computer equipment has been seized but no arrests have been made, the force said." Whoever does get arrested for this, they won't be facing the same charges for intent to supply drugs. I'm not sure on the penalty of stealing electricity, but it's probably a lot less severe.
Looking at the picture, they are using really old bitcoin ASIC miners from 2017. A profitability calculator I found says this Antminer S9 can get $948/year of income in exchange for $1,371 worth of electricity. That's a loss of $422/year. Obviously it's not profitable to use anymore, unless you are literally stealing electricity like these guys.
Man, I was hoping some graphics cards would be liquidated to cover the losses.
I don't follow this stuff too closely but my understanding is that graphics card prices are a good indicator here, and that GPU-powered mining is still acting to drive up prices.
A little off topic but I always found it interesting that the "theft" of electricity is actually called Abstracting in UK law, since you can't really steal the electricity itself. > ...it was held that electricity could not be stolen as it is not property within the meaning of section 4 of the Theft Act 1968... Before the Computer Misuse Act 1990 those who misused computers ("hackers") were charged with abstracting e…
And yet we still call intellectual "property" just that, "intellectual property" even though it's not a property for most of the laws except for the ones written to specifically deal with intellectual "property". The wonderful world of law.
"Detectives said they were tipped off about lots of people visiting the unit throughout the day and a police drone picked up a lot of heat coming from the building." Does that imply a drone with infrared capabilities?
...one has to wonder also why they needed to keep visiting the place once they set everything up.
"Detectives said they were tipped off about lots of people visiting the unit throughout the day and a police drone picked up a lot of heat coming from the building." Does that imply a drone with infrared capabilities?
Looking at the picture, they are using really old bitcoin ASIC miners from 2017. A profitability calculator I found says this Antminer S9 can get $948/year of income in exchange for $1,371 worth of electricity. That's a loss of $422/year. Obviously it's not profitable to use anymore, unless you are literally stealing electricity like these guys.
Isn’t that entirely dependent on your electrical rate? There must be some break even point right?
The break-even point is 8c per kWh. But there will be other overheads, so you probably need 6c per kWh to actually make a profit.
Such prices most be possible to obtain in a few oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Looking at the picture, they are using really old bitcoin ASIC miners from 2017. A profitability calculator I found says this Antminer S9 can get $948/year of income in exchange for $1,371 worth of electricity. That's a loss of $422/year. Obviously it's not profitable to use anymore, unless you are literally stealing electricity like these guys.
Edit: Several people have pointed out that you can just buy BTC or crypto directly. Besides the initial hardware cost (which requires cash up front) how do you generate income to buy crypto on a regular basis?
I say: combine the two (cannabis farming and bitcoin mining)!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can they be forced to give up all of the proceeds from their illegal actiivty?
I think they just need to pay the amount they stole plus penalty.
Looking at the picture, they are using really old bitcoin ASIC miners from 2017. A profitability calculator I found says this Antminer S9 can get $948/year of income in exchange for $1,371 worth of electricity. That's a loss of $422/year. Obviously it's not profitable to use anymore, unless you are literally stealing electricity like these guys.
Profitability calculators typically rely on the current market rate of BTC. Even if they paid for electricity, they could make up for it by keeping their earnings in BTC/whatever. Whether that's a smart decision is another issue, but for some mining is like a startup in that you burn cash early in hopes of a big exit down the road. Edit: Several people have pointed out that you can just buy BTC or crypto directly. Be…