Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity • Hacker News Board

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#161

Post by rjmunro » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #70

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…

Yep. My nan runs a secret bakery. Does she deserve the cops breathing down her neck?

If her ovens are rigged to bypass the electricity meters, then yes, she does.

If she had a large bitcoin mining operation going on, and used the profit to pay an electricity bill that was in the right ball park, then the cops would leave her alone.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#162

Post by elif » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

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?

Basically, today fees make up ~40% of payout for miners.

with EIP 1559, those fees will be reduced and also completely burned instead of given to miners.

Instead, miners will receive "tips" from users trying to encourage faster block inclusion.

No one knows how much "tips" will make up for the lost revenue, so it's kind of hard to mount a sizable resistance to the change, in the context of the obvious benefits it conveys to miners by making the currency healthier.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#163

Post by elif » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

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.

Winter greenhouse farming.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#164

Post by imtringued » Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

Crackpot idea. The entire point of cryptocurrency mining is that you prove that you have burned X dollars worth of energy. Why not cut the middlemen and just let miners pay in dollars (stablecoins technically)? We can then donate the left over dollars to charities.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#165

Post by paulgb » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #164

Crackpot idea. The entire point of cryptocurrency mining is that you prove that you have burned X dollars worth of energy. Why not cut the middlemen and just let miners pay in dollars (stablecoins technically)? We can then donate the left over dollars to charities.

Because someone would have to verify that the money was donated, which would be impossible to do in an entirely distributed way.

I agree that it would be a Pareto improvement if such coordination were actually possible, though.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#166

Post by boringg » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

avianlyric wrote: post #148

boringg wrote: post #139

You'd think the UK grid has better tech for revenue protection (Aka protection against stealing). There have been a lot of companies who specialize in doing this in the US. Its a combination of data processing and decent quality hardware on the grid. My suspicion is they haven't done upgrades on their systems...

You’re making the assumption that the loss is large enough to warrant the hardware improvements. Getting high quality data about an electricity grid is extremely expensive and difficult. A big part of that in the U.K. is driven by the fact that most of our distribution networks are underground, which means that a lot of equipment is located below ground level. This gives you one big problem, the place where you want…

Counter - How do you know the level of loss if you don't have visibility into it?

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#167

Post by selectodude » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

phire wrote: post #138

kasey_junk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can routinely get ~2 c kWh in Chicago: https://hourlypricing.comed.com/

That's not the total price. It doesn't include Transmission, distribution, taxes or whatever a "Capacity Charge" is.

Capacity charge is how they reduce the shitstorms that happen when the cost of electricity skyrockets and real time pricing becomes national news. They're basically forcing you to hedge your future electricity usage.

If you shut off your bitcoin miners during the warmest parts of the day, your capacity charge will go down.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#168

Post by geuis » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

onionisafruit wrote: post #127

I would be curious to know how much mining is done using stolen electricity.

It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? Plug mining rigs into someone else’s power outlet.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#169

Post by linsomniac » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:22 PM UTC

"Police expected to find a cannabis farm." Back when I was mining Bitcoin, I expected to be raided because of this. That was back before CO legalized. Never ended up happening though.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#170

Post by bb611 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #166

avianlyric wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re making the assumption that the loss is large enough to warrant the hardware improvements. Getting high quality data about an electricity grid is extremely expensive and difficult. A big part of that in the U.K. is driven by the fact that most of our distribution networks are underground, which means that a lot of equipment is located below ground level. This gives you one big problem, the place where you want…

Counter - How do you know the level of loss if you don't have visibility into it?

(Power put on lines - expected transmission losses) * billed cost of power - customer payments.

I hope for the sake of their billing department they're using a database and some customized software for the data, but could just as likely be in a large and painful excel spreadsheet.

Power theft is not particularly interesting to the power company unless they're not getting paid for it. If it's just the wrong person paying, that's their problem.