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Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#111

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Ensorceled wrote: post #93
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>Now you are just going off into weird conspiracy theories

I'm not alleging a conspiracy theory. Those are words you are using to construct an ad-hominum by implying my assertion in in bad company. I'm firmly of the belief that the cops are rational humans responding to incentives.

> Lots of raids come up empty handed or turn out to have a valid explanation

A "raid coming up empty handed" is exactly the failure mode I'm complaining about. The police should be realizing there's no grow-op long before any sort of "raid".

>The police don't have a list of people they want to punish because it turns out they weren't criminals.

I didn't say they did. I said they will routinely prosecute minor stuff they weren't looking for that they normally wouldn't pursue rather than come up empty handed.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#112

Post by rtkwe »

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

I remember seeing some talk about a company creating ASIC blocks to heat houses but grows afaik don't generally need more heat the lights and everything creates enough heat for the plants.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#113

Post by sokoloff »

Ensorceled wrote: post #101
sokoloff wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If the heat is beyond what could be produced by a high-efficiency heat pump and other heat sources, I agree there’s likely PC (and I think I said so, or at least tried to).

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#114

Post by tluyben2 »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #97
onion2k wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might have been profitable 2 months, it's not anymore and soon it will seem silly (when BTC drops below 20k) even until the next bull market comes along.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#115

Post by dagw »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #81
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…

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.

no-one is going to bat an eyelid about heat or electricity use.

They will if you're stealing the electricity.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#116

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Ensorceled wrote: post #90
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.

Especially with your big sign out front: "Gloria's Glass Globes" and, also, you'd probably be paying for all that electricity with a check from Gloria's Glass Globes Ltd.

Businesses that are not consumer facing are often far less diligent about signage and advertising than people think.

You'd think one of the largest (legal) indoor grow-ops in my state is a shipping products manufacturer if you went by the sign on the building. The shipping products manufacturer outgrew the building and is leasing it to the pot business. There's a business near me that manufactures medical plastics. Before them the facility was occupied by a company making pasta. Neither has a sign out front. The only difference is the company name on the white box trucks changed.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#117

Post by dieortin »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #76
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.

> ETH, which is changing I don't think this is the first time I've read of a substantial change being made to a cryptocurrency. Doesn't this kind of thing completely belie the usual claim that it's free from central control? > Many are still in denial, hoping there will be "another coin" to mine. Again I don't follow this stuff that closely, but this doesn't seem absurd on the face of it. Is there a reason to think t…

> Doesn’t this kind of thing completely belie the usual claim that it’s free from central control?

Why would something changing mean it’s centrally controlled? Bitcoin has also undergone changes (although not as big as this one) and it that doesn’t mean it’s not decentralized.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#118

Post by oliwarner »

kasey_junk wrote: post #98
phire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Bloody hell, not in the UK. £0.15/kWh is pretty standard. If you go wholesale there are microscopic portions where it dips as low as minus-£0.10/kWh but generally you're still looking at 10p a unit or more.

Of course this is moot when you're not paying the bill, as this story says.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#119

Post by papercrane »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #76
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.

> ETH, which is changing I don't think this is the first time I've read of a substantial change being made to a cryptocurrency. Doesn't this kind of thing completely belie the usual claim that it's free from central control? > Many are still in denial, hoping there will be "another coin" to mine. Again I don't follow this stuff that closely, but this doesn't seem absurd on the face of it. Is there a reason to think t…

> Doesn't this kind of thing completely belie the usual claim that it's free from central control?

It's consensus based, and the core ETH developers have a strong following. There likely will be (and probably already are) forks of ETH that keep proof-of-work, but they'll likely wither off if they don't have a large enough backing behind them.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#120

Post by OJFord »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #76
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.

> ETH, which is changing I don't think this is the first time I've read of a substantial change being made to a cryptocurrency. Doesn't this kind of thing completely belie the usual claim that it's free from central control? > Many are still in denial, hoping there will be "another coin" to mine. Again I don't follow this stuff that closely, but this doesn't seem absurd on the face of it. Is there a reason to think t…

> I don't think this is the first time I've read of a substantial change being made to a cryptocurrency. Doesn't this kind of thing completely belie the usual claim that it's free from central control?

As I understand it, what actually happens is it 'forks'. Like open source software - anyone free to use it differently or change it dramatically, but most people will stick with the branch maintained most actively or by the original maintainers.

> [There being another coin to mine] doesn't seem absurd on the face of it. Is there a reason to think this won't happen?

There are already loads, so I suppose no, of course it will/already has. The trouble is it needs a high enough valuation (with volume) to support the sunk cost of hardware to anywhere near the extent that Ethereum has for them.

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