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Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#91

Post by FredPret »

scatters wrote: post #58
kleiba wrote: post #21

I say: combine the two (cannabis farming and bitcoin mining)!

Unfortunately the laws of thermodynamics will get in the way. Cannabis farming uses electricity to build organic chemicals and outputs waste heat at 40°C; bitcoin mining uses electricity to solve equations and outputs waste heat at 40°C. There's not really any way to use the waste products of one as an input to the other.

A CPU/ASIC can be seen as an electrical heater with extra steps. So why not heat up your plants with your CPU. The energy flow is: power plant -> CPU -> greenhouse -> the atmosphere

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#92

Post by Mauricebranagh »

jaymzcampbell wrote: post #30

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…

Stealing her Majesties electricity back in the day

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#93

Post by Ensorceled »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #86
mytailorisrich wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't raid a place based on high electricity consumption or heat alone. They do when this is not expected and suspicious based on other factors as well. For instance a domestic property or, in this case, a warehouse that officially uses no electricity. If you rent a warehouse to run your official glass baubles manufacturing business then no-one is going to bat an eyelid about heat or electricity use.

>They don't raid a place based on high electricity consumption or heat alone. Sure. But it puts you on the kind of list you don't want to be on and from there there's a good chance they screw you for something stupid because they don't like to come up empty handed after spending resources surveilling you and not finding what they were looking for.

Now you are just going off into weird conspiracy theories. Lots of raids come up empty handed or turn out to have a valid explanation. The police don't have a list of people they want to punish because it turns out they weren't criminals.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#94

Post by mschuster91 »

scatters wrote: post #61
mschuster91 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat thing is even more ridiculous, given that farmers have shifted to LED lighting for years now precisely to avoid heat emission that can be picked up by police copters...

The power still ends up as heat; LEDs just mean that less of it is wasted.

... and as a result, you need less heat and thus the chance of being detected by a thermal copter or melting snow on the roof is lower.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#95

Post by [deleted] »

why_only_15 wrote: post #62
josefresco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you have to pay $50k in electricity to mine a $40k bitcoin, it would be better to just turn off the mine and buy the bitcoin directly.

[deleted]

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#97

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

onion2k wrote: post #59
sschueller wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they just need to pay the amount they stole plus penalty.

Here in the UK we have what's known as CPSPOC, or "Criminal Prosecution Service Proceeds of Crime" unit. Their job is to recover all proceeds from criminal activity. In this case I imagine they'll try to argue that the bitcoins mined with stolen electricity are proceeds of crime, and they'll confiscate them. The money recovered will go to the treasury after the electricity company has been compensated.

That assumes they can actually get the Bitcoin. It's also likely that there won't be anything left after compensating the power company, since the mining operation was likely unprofitable if taking the cost of electricity into account.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#98

Post by kasey_junk »

phire wrote: post #56
alex_young wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that entirely dependent on your electrical rate? There must be some break even point right?

That website was using a electrical rate of USD 12c per kWh, which is already on the low side. I think most electricity 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.

You can routinely get ~2 c kWh in Chicago:

https://hourlypricing.comed.com/

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#99

Post by _joel »

staticautomatic wrote: post #82
mewwts wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you have all that money tied up in an old mining rig which has close to zero resale value.

Can mining rigs be repurposed for anything useful?

Nope, the ones in the article are ASICs, so specifically for bitcoin. There are GPU based ones but the number of coins that you can mine with them is dwindling. You could probably reuse the beaglebone black or whatever little auxillary computer they're using but it's not really worth it. It's just e-waste.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#100

Post by Mauricebranagh »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #35
kleiba wrote: post #21

I say: combine the two (cannabis farming and bitcoin mining)!

There has got to be a British Gangster movie in this somewhere!

Tommy Shelbys Grandsons and Greatgrand sons :-)

Hey BBC want to hire me as technical consultant for the show

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