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Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#101

Post by Ensorceled »

sokoloff wrote: post #89
Ensorceled wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A report from the public, unusual activity for the location, lots of heat that can't be explained by official electrical usage and, probably, not explained by the registered or zoned usage (probably light industrial). Sounds like more than enough to get a warrant.

I personally would hope that wouldn’t be enough (at least in the US). I don’t see anything in the above list of facts that rises to articulable probable cause that a specific crime is being committed. (Maybe you could tighten the analysis a bit to get to PC that electricity or gas are being stolen. I’d be OK with that.)

You have a ton of heat with no power source to generate that heat ... so either they are stealing the electricity or have an illegal power plant of some kind. That is enough for a warrant for the electricity theft. The other evidence leads to their guess on what they think the electricity is being stolen for, but electricity was definitely being stolen.

What more do you want here?

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#102

Post by cinntaile »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #72
josefresco wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPU mining is currently concentrated on ETH, which is changing (EIP 1559) mid-July (and then later this year). The GPU market will change (and already is) dramatically after that. Many are still in denial, hoping there will be "another coin" to mine. Or, they're just spreading false hope to give them time to dump their hardware.

Is EIP 1559 expected to meaningfully affect mining profitability, especially for miners who already own the hardware?

Mining profitability hugely varies based on how much traffic there is on the ethereum network, since you have to pay higher fees to include your transaction in a block if there is a lot of demand. EIP 1559 changes the fee structure. It wants to burn the new basefee so miners don't profit from that, there is still a small tip part left though.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#103

Post by throwaway0a5e »

simias wrote: post #87
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what more you'd reasonably expect to find. Literally any sort of activity that uses electrical ovens. I can think of dozens of processes for the manufacture of plastic, ceramic and metal items where you're gonna want to bake stuff. Edit: Apparently it wasn't obvious I was disagree about the assertion that "Based on heat and people coming and going" is normal justification for raiding a pot grow op and…

These activities would certainly be legally incorporated and easy to cross reference. I also suspect that these ovens don't run 24/7. If they use their drones on a Sunday outside of work hours they can probably weed out (ha) many false positives.

> These activities would certainly be legally incorporated and easy to cross reference.

Facilities are leased and sometimes sub-leased all the time. Just because Joe's T-shirt Printing owns three warehouses doesn't mean they haven't rented one out to a yoga studio and another out to a machine shop.

Just because P&Q Precision Tool exists as a business in state records doesn't mean you have any idea that they're operating out of the Joe's T-Shirt Printing Warehouse that was vacant for the last 3yr.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#104

Post by Mauricebranagh »

santamex wrote: post #36

How does the police think it is a good idea to make the raid when no one is inside. The article said that a lot of people go in and out everyday and no one was arrested. I don’t get it.

My thought as well I suspect they thought they would catch a bunch of trafficked people well at least they didn't Get Prti Patel down for the photo op.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#106

Post by rtkwe »

josefresco wrote: post #57
phire wrote: post #42

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…

If you have the money to pay for the electricity you'll see more profit by just buying the BTC at the current market price. You start making money immediately instead of having to make it to the electricity price you paid. So it still only makes sense as a strategy if you're stealing electricity, have an off grid system with excess electricity (or you don't get paid for back feeding the grid) or have a (really really) weird cashflow situation.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#107

Post by derekp7 »

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…

So there was not concept of "theft of service" then? Or was that also not called theft, but something else similar to abstracting? I.e., if you walked out without paying the barber or something like that.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#108

Post by bluGill »

alex_young wrote: post #46
phire wrote: post #42

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?

Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#109

Post by rtkwe »

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?

Not really they're extremely specialized chips that only do lots of hashes fast. They can't even be used for an different blockchain unless it's block hashing is similar enough and uses the same algorithm.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#110

Post by sashimi-houdini »

FredPret wrote: post #91
scatters wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because plants don't grow from heat, but from light
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