Would’ve been funny if they had 420 rigs mining, though.
So the whole NFT thing really dredged this up, but cryptocurrency is a massive energy drain. Not just mining (which is an even larger drain) but the storage. And that dovetails nicely with the fact that U.K. police recently busted a Bitcoin mining facility that was stealing electricity.
Except, going in, they didn’t know that it was a Bitcoin mining facility. As they explain:
Officers forced entry to the premises in Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell, on 18 May on the back of intelligence suggesting it was being used as a cannabis farm.
We heard how lots of people were visiting the unit at different times of day, lots of wiring and ventilation ducts were visible, and a police drone picked up a considerable heat source from above.
They are all classic cannabis factory signs – but when officers gained entry they found a huge bank of around 100 computer units as part of what’s understood to be a Bitcoin mining operation.
So they were pretty surprised to find none of that sticky icky, and instead a bunch of red-hot mining machines. Which all that energy and ventilation were really for. They seized the compound on May 18th, discovering that the people running the operation had stolen several thousand pounds of electricity to power their mining.
Sandwell Police Sergeant Jennifer Griffin, said: “It’s certainly not what we were expecting! It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up and I believe it’s only the second such crypto mine we’ve encountered in the West Midlands.
While the mining of cryptocurrency isn’t illegal, stealing electricity to power a setup for doing so is. Nobody was there at the time of the raid, though, so police are questioning the owner of the space to see if they can track the responsible parties down.
Source: Engadget
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