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Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#141

Post by josefresco »

rtkwe wrote: post #106
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 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…

Let's assume your mining rig costs $1 to run, generates 1 FAKECOIN with a current value of $.90. That first month you pay $0.10 out of pocket for 1 FAKECOIN. If you had just purchased 1 FAKECOIN, it would have cost you $1. 10x the cost. Like a startup, this is not sustainable without external factors changing. "Just buy it directly" requires a separate income.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#142

Post by Hamuko »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #27
fnord77 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other crapcoins are possible w/ GPUs https://whattomine.com/

Even with the new GPU mining protections that nvidia baked in? edit: i mean it's probably a moot point, mining at 10% efficiency is still worth money if you're tapping electricity from somewhere.

The protection is only against Ethereum specifically. You can mine non-Ethereum shitcoins at full blast.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#143

Post by vulcan01 »

roenxi wrote: post #128
koheripbal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no "master" set of definitions in law. Every law has its own definitions. So contrary definitions are irrelevant.

Well ... irrelevant in the technical execution of the justice system. In practice it makes the laws easier to follow if people use the same words for the same concepts and tests. If property means physical stuff in one law and thought in another it may become confusing to work out how to follow the law.

Property, in law, practically always means "something someone owns". Intellectual property is something someone owns, just as a house is. I'm not sure there are conflicting definitions in the law.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#145

Post by notacoward »

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.

Having people there raises the probability of either injury or evidence destruction/contamination. They probably know who those people are anyway, so once they have the evidence they can go after the people one by one at leisure.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#146

Post by arsome »

bluGill wrote: post #108
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?

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.

Yeah, during the winter I mine on my video card because I'm basically just swapping some of my natural gas heat out for a few hundred watts of electric heat and my electricity is primarily provided by nuclear and hydro.

Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can be.

I'll definitely look more into heatpumps when it comes time to replace my furnace or air conditioner, but my understanding is they perform quite poorly in Canadian winters.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#147

Post by Slartie »

knorker wrote: post #84
drexlspivey wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is unless you get the GPUs for free as well

Who says they wouldn't be stolen too?

Even when you get those stolen GPUs placed on your porch for free, you still have to set them up in mining rigs, install software, cables, cooling et cetera, and you need to cater to the hardware once it is running and fix problems coming up.

The difference between Bitcoin ASICs and GPUs in performance is large enough to make the expenses with these activities not worth the hassle, even if you get the hardware AND the power for free.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#148

Post by avianlyric »

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 to install your fancy new sensors are all located in places that most telecom systems don’t/can’t serve (4G doesn’t work very well in a hole). Plus to make your life even harder, power distribution equipment puts of plenty of EM interference, making radio comms even harder. So you can put the hardware in, you just can’t communicate with it. Making it kinda useless.

Obviously there are plenty of place were this isn’t true, but they’re in the minority. End result is that lots of fancy equipment doesn’t get deployed.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#149

Post by Empf »

arsome wrote: post #146
bluGill wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, during the winter I mine on my video card because I'm basically just swapping some of my natural gas heat out for a few hundred watts of electric heat and my electricity is primarily provided by nuclear and hydro. Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can be. I'll definitely look more into heatpumps when it comes time to replace my furnace or ai…

I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater.

It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#150

Post by marktangotango »

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.

I did the math in my area/provider and it came out to a .01 discount on the standard rate, which is not much of a discount at all. Even for the largest industrial, multi megawatt plans, which was surprising.
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