[HN Gopher] Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity
___________________________________________________________________
Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity
Author : frereubu
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-05-28 10:24 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| gberger wrote:
| What is a "Sandwell Bitcoin mine"?
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| It's a bitcoin mine in Sandwell, England
| [deleted]
| josefresco wrote:
| "Detectives said they were tipped off about lots of people
| visiting the unit throughout the day and a police drone picked up
| a lot of heat coming from the building."
|
| Does that imply a drone with infrared capabilities?
| philjohn wrote:
| Yes - they also have IR cameras on police helicopters and use
| this to identify likely cannabis farms fairly regularly in the
| UK.
| 542458 wrote:
| They're also useful for search&rescue as well as finding
| people who are trying hide in foliage, but yeah.
| [deleted]
| andylynch wrote:
| Possibly. But it could also be something as simple as a snow
| free roof when the neighbourhood is covered. Or one unusually
| dry after rain.
| sschueller wrote:
| DJI sells a FLIR addon for their drones. [1] The mavic 2
| enterprise is also available with a FLIR camera. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.dji.com/ch/zenmuse-xt
|
| [2] https://www.dji.com/ch/mavic-2-enterprise
| deepserket wrote:
| yes, ir cameras are widely used in helicopters, eg.
| https://youtu.be/Q481RMKwpCY?t=45 it's a no brainer to mount
| them on drones too
| piva00 wrote:
| Yup, that's been pretty commonplace for a few years, I believe.
| Dutch police has been using drones for more than a decade, IR
| capabilities included for tracking people smuggling and
| cannabis farms indoors.
|
| I'd believe that most of the police forces in the EU already
| have some of those, can't see a reason why they wouldn't, it
| provides you almost the same surveillance capacity as a
| helicopter without all the expensive equipment and pilot
| training.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Drones with thermal cameras (usually for firefighting, search-
| and-rescue and electrical inspection) have been around for a
| little while.
| tsukikage wrote:
| ...one has to wonder also why they needed to keep visiting the
| place once they set everything up.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Maybe they were still setting up?
| deepserket wrote:
| yeah, and _lots_ of people... i don 't know
| bserge wrote:
| Showing off to everyone at the pub, obviously. That farm
| was apparently barely profitable even with free electricity
| heh
| knorker wrote:
| I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to see organized crime committing crimes.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Based on heat and people coming and going, police assumed it was
| a cannabis farm . Based on that incorrect conclusion, they raided
| the place. Flimsy evidence.
| the-dude wrote:
| Lots of traffic to a flat, neighbours complaining.
|
| Police suspect a cocaine dealer and raid the place.
|
| However : the dealer was selling heroine.
|
| Flimsy evidence?
| Humdeee wrote:
| The 'ol switcheroo.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| I vote flimsy. Lots of people get many visitors. Right?
|
| What's your take?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The heat thing is even more ridiculous, given that farmers have
| shifted to LED lighting for years now precisely to avoid heat
| emission that can be picked up by police copters...
| jhgb wrote:
| > to avoid heat emission that can be picked up by police
| copters
|
| Sounds like farmers need some kind of heat rejection system.
| scatters wrote:
| The power still ends up as heat; LEDs just mean that less of
| it is wasted.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Which means that a lot less power input is needed for the
| same light output, which means less waste heat (should be
| around 10-20% of the heat an incandescent setup creates).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| ... and as a result, you need less heat and thus the chance
| of being detected by a thermal copter or melting snow on
| the roof is lower.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Didn't they raid the place because they knew that they were
| stealing electricity?
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Good point it sounds like the had a tip about that and some
| follow up with Western Power Distribution.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Sooo ... not flimsy evidence?
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Yeah, tip + follow up. Not just heat + many people.
|
| Why do you write "Sooo.."
| Ensorceled wrote:
| 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.
| sokoloff wrote:
| 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.)
| Ensorceled wrote:
| 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?
| sokoloff wrote:
| 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).
| pjc50 wrote:
| Entirely normal evidence for raiding cannabis farms. I'm not
| sure what more you'd reasonably expect to find.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > 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 not this
| specific case where a warehouse that is supposedly
| disconnected is using tons of power.
|
| Also, it seems like a whole lot of people here don't
| understand that it is very common for facilities to be
| occupied by a tenant that's not the owner and who doesn't
| have any signage out front. If you're going in with a
| preconceived notion that you're looking for a grow op it's
| really easy to misread things done out of economic
| convenience as though they were intentional obfuscation.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >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.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >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.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| dagw wrote:
| _no-one is going to bat an eyelid about heat or
| electricity use._
|
| They will if you're stealing the electricity.
| simias wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > 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.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| An unregistered smelter using large amounts of stolen
| electricity is still commiting a crime, just not an
| interesting one
| avianlyric wrote:
| I imagine the complete lack of anything actually being
| shipped into or out of the unit during normal hours was
| probably a big give away.
|
| Most people when using an industrial unit to bake things,
| then sell the things they bake. Rather than just piling
| them up in a corner until the entire unit is full.
| paulcole wrote:
| Yep. My nan runs a secret bakery. Does she deserve the cops
| breathing down her neck?
| rjmunro wrote:
| 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.
| kleiba wrote:
| I say: combine the two (cannabis farming and bitcoin mining)!
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Proof-of-Chillness
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| There has got to be a British Gangster movie in this somewhere!
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Tommy Shelbys Grandsons and Greatgrand sons :-)
|
| Hey BBC want to hire me as technical consultant for the show
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Just imagine that one scene from the Snatch! where Lincoln
| instead of a fianite tries to fend off a golden-painted
| manhole cover that the Pikies convinced him was a Bitcoin :)
|
| Edit: Oh God, it's actually an actual thing that already
| exists: [1]
|
| [1] https://bitcoinpenny.com/products/the-manhole-cover-
| physical...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| So I think it's more Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking barrels -
| with the big Bitcoin penny being used to smash in people's
| heads along the way -
|
| "hey, why's there so much blood on this thing?"
|
| "you don't wanna know"
|
| "I do want to know Tom, I do - enlighten me, where did all
| this blood come from? Wait a minute, is that hair and bits
| of brain down here? You don't normally see that kind of
| thing on coinage of the realm Tom"
|
| on edit: formatting, and made dialog more Ritchiean.
| scatters wrote:
| Unfortunately the laws of thermodynamics will get in the way.
| Cannabis farming uses electricity to build organic chemicals
| and outputs waste heat at 40degC; bitcoin mining uses
| electricity to solve equations and outputs waste heat at
| 40degC. There's not really any way to use the waste products of
| one as an input to the other.
| darkcha0s wrote:
| Just scalp enough 3090's with RGB lighting and you might just
| have enough light/wattage to grow
| de6u99er wrote:
| Cannabis farming would be much easier and cost effective if
| it could be done out in the open.
| FredPret wrote:
| 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
| rightbyte wrote:
| A heat pump is preferable.
| sashimi-houdini wrote:
| Because plants don't grow from heat, but from light
| rtkwe wrote:
| 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.
| Apfel wrote:
| Depends on both local climate and lighting method. LEDs
| output very little heat nowadays
| elif wrote:
| Winter greenhouse farming.
| Havoc wrote:
| Residential heating would work
| bserge wrote:
| How to upgrade your sentence from a fine to prison time 101 :D
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Bit odd the Cops didn't wait intel the premises had visitors
| inside would could have been arrested.
| jaymzcampbell wrote:
| 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 electricity,
| as no other law applied_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstracting_electricity
| Joker_vD wrote:
| And yet we still call intellectual "property" just that,
| "intellectual property" even though it's not a property for
| most of the laws except for the ones written to specifically
| deal with intellectual "property". The wonderful world of law.
| igravious wrote:
| Very good point.
| koheripbal wrote:
| There's no "master" set of definitions in law. Every law has
| its own definitions. So contrary definitions are irrelevant.
| matwood wrote:
| Great point. Go look at any substantial legal agreement and
| there is normally a bunch of definitions at the top or in
| an amendment.
| roenxi wrote:
| 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.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| 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.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Stealing her Majesties electricity back in the day
| derekp7 wrote:
| 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.
| robjan wrote:
| That would be the crime of "Making off without payment"
| Tomte wrote:
| The same problem and solution in Germany, but already in 1900:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entziehung_elektrischer_Energi...
|
| It seems that the French high court ruled differently, and they
| just prosecuted it under the regular theft statute.
| [deleted]
| _joel wrote:
| Those ASIC's look old, however if you're not paying for power
| then it's all profit.
| santamex wrote:
| 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.
| notacoward wrote:
| 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.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| 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.
| paulgb wrote:
| 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.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I would be curious to know how much mining is done using stolen
| electricity.
| geuis wrote:
| It's pretty obvious isn't it? Plug mining rigs into someone
| else's power outlet.
| williesleg wrote:
| Now that's some hacker news! On the home page twice!
| hughrr wrote:
| So the police are getting RTX cards this Christmas and we still
| aren't :(
| Hamuko wrote:
| Those are ASICs. Mining Bitcoin on an RTX is untenable.
| amelius wrote:
| Not if you get electricity for free.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| It still is unless you get the GPUs for free as well
| knorker wrote:
| Who says they wouldn't be stolen too?
| Slartie wrote:
| 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.
| mvanaltvorst wrote:
| The police images show ASICs.
| fnord77 wrote:
| other crapcoins are possible w/ GPUs
|
| https://whattomine.com/
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
| Hamuko wrote:
| The protection is only against Ethereum specifically. You
| can mine non-Ethereum shitcoins at full blast.
| ccity88 wrote:
| "The computer equipment has been seized but no arrests have been
| made, the force said."
|
| Whoever does get arrested for this, they won't be facing the same
| charges for intent to supply drugs. I'm not sure on the penalty
| of stealing electricity, but it's probably a lot less severe.
| [deleted]
| Hamuko wrote:
| Can they be forced to give up all of the proceeds from their
| illegal actiivty?
| sschueller wrote:
| I think they just need to pay the amount they stole plus
| penalty.
| onion2k wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| onion2k wrote:
| _That assumes they can actually get the Bitcoin._
|
| If they can't then they can also charge the people behind
| the electricity theft with a bunch of additional crimes
| about withholding the proceeds of crime, money
| laundering, refusing to hand over encryption keys, etc.
| If the operation was unprofitable that doesn't matter
| either - if the CPS determine you mined, say, 1000BTC
| then that's what you 'owe'. If you can't pay it then
| they'll seize your other assets up to that amount. That
| money is then used to pay the electricity company,
| government, etc.
|
| The law is very much rigged against you if you're caught.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| 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.
| robin_reala wrote:
| The crime is specifically "abstracting electricity", which is
| dealt with in the Theft Art 1968. Highest sentence seems to be
| 5 years imprisonment, but 1 year the normal upper limit:
| https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-co...
| [deleted]
| cinntaile wrote:
| I don't get your reply? Obviously they're not facing charges
| for intent to supply drugs because that's not what they did?
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Computer equipment getting seized is unusual for electricity
| theft.
| bserge wrote:
| It will probably be returned.
| dboreham wrote:
| Police like to seize stuff.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If it's a business getting raided for a crime I would
| expect some seizure of computer equipment might happen.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| In a consumer setting, I would be also be surprised. In
| this setting where it probably isn't clear exactly who the
| perpetrators are, you seize the assets until you can figure
| that out. I'm sure this wasn't all being done by "Sandwell
| Bitcoin Miners Ltd.", a registered British corporation
| majority owned by Joe Sandwell.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Normally when the police find a large amount of electricity
| theft it's for drugs, and the "news" in this is that it's for
| some other purpose.
| sandwell wrote:
| Nothing to do with me >.>
| linsomniac wrote:
| "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.
| phire wrote:
| 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.
| bialpio wrote:
| Would be way more profitable if they figured out some way to
| re-sell what electricity they stole...
| therein wrote:
| Yeah man, they should have just pushed those electrons back
| into the interconnect after they ran them through their
| miners.
| Black101 wrote:
| Free electricity is not a thing in your world?
| rideontime wrote:
| Of course not. In what world is electricity free?
| alex_young wrote:
| Isn't that entirely dependent on your electrical rate? There
| must be some break even point right?
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| adolph wrote:
| It might be worthwhile for larger electricity customers to
| perform off-peak mining. Or even better, for someone to
| offer mining as a service to those customers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
| arsome wrote:
| 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.
| amarant wrote:
| I don't know about Canadian winters, but heat pumps
| certainly perform well in Swedish winters, which I don't
| imagine are much milder than Canadian ones.
|
| If you can get a water-water heat pump you'll be fine for
| sure (requires drilling a rather deep hole in your
| backyard tho, so the initial investment is a bit bigger)
| jfim wrote:
| I've heard before that the climate in Sweden is
| relatively mild considering its latitude, mostly due to
| the marine currents. A quick comparison of climate seems
| to suggest that this is the case:
| https://www.weather2travel.com/weather-
| comparison/?placename...
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| While geothermal systems do use heat pumps, the term
| "heat pump" in general conversation almost always refers
| to air-source heat pumps (air to air), not geothermal. In
| the US/Canada, drilling additional wells is prohibitively
| expensive for most people, which is why geothermal
| systems haven't taken off.
|
| Heat pumps don't perform very well, or at all, when it's
| -30deg or -40deg, so a secondary heat source is needed.
| Usually, that will be natural gas, in which case why
| bother with a heat pump when you can just burn much
| cheaper natural gas?
| shkkmo wrote:
| The context maters here. If a boat is being discussed, it
| won't be air to air.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| What's your point?
| bluGill wrote:
| Heat pumps are cheaper than propane at least, though I'm
| not sure if they are enough cheaper as to be worth the
| cost.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce
| your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can
| be.
|
| Have you actually done that calculation out? You say "
| _primarily_ provided by ", but I wonder what that means,
| given just how much electricity you need to actually heat
| a home via GPUs.
|
| (You may of course be saving money given the profit you
| generate, but that's not the same thing as reducing
| emissions.)
| eigenvector wrote:
| Air source heat pumps are fine for the places where most
| Canadians live including southern Ontario & Quebec and
| coastal British Columbia. If you live in Winnipeg or
| Saskatoon it might be dicey, but unless it routinely
| drops below -20C for extended periods you're fine. And
| you can have backup resistive heating elements for the
| occasional cold snap anyways.
| robocat wrote:
| > 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 think you are likely mistaken, although it is a
| surprisingly common misconception. Most places in the
| world, if you are using an extra kWh of power, the system
| needs to generate up to an extra marginal kWh from coal
| or gas.
|
| Example 1: France generates power 70% from nuclear.
| However if a French person uses an extra kWh during base
| load, that could easily lead to one less kWh exported,
| which would most likely mean one extra kWh is generated
| from say coal somewhere else in Europe.
|
| Example 2: New Zealand generates 60% of power from hydro.
| If I use an extra kWh of power at the moment (even at
| cheap rates), then if we have a drought in 6 months time,
| then an extra kWh needs to be generated from coal in 6
| months time. I am presuming the coming critical storm[1]
| this weekend won't fill our hydro lakes[2] and that the
| predicted long term dry weather pattern[0] will occur. I
| am a New Zealander.
|
| You could be right if you are only using your power when
| it is cheapest (which usually implies the usage of base
| load nuclear), although it is surprisingly difficult to
| actually figure out whether you have generated zero extra
| carbon.
|
| [0] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/441393/hydro-
| power-more-...
|
| [2] https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-
| operator/security-supply...
|
| [1] https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-
| zealand/2021/05/rare-red-...
|
| Edit: on second thoughts in NZ I am sure our lakes can't
| fill that quickly from one good storm - the inflow rate
| is limited by the size of the river and the inflow rate
| is small compared to the storage size?
| oblio wrote:
| Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto
| Empf wrote:
| 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
| arsome wrote:
| My understanding is it's essentially just as efficient as
| a resistive electrical heater as all the energy used in
| your video card is converted to heat at some point in the
| process. There may be some very minor loss here, but I'm
| not enough of a physicist to say what it'd be.
| Empf wrote:
| That's what I'm wondering. It costs energy to move
| electrons
| bluGill wrote:
| That energy is all turned into heat. Waste from the point
| of view of a bitcoin mining attempt. However heat is a
| useful byproduct in this case when the local temperature
| is lower than the inhabitant would desire.
| awrence wrote:
| It's pretty brilliant actually. Case 1 electric space
| heaters blindly pass electricity through dumb wires. Case
| 2 instead of dumb wires you use ASICs. Case 2 is a win
| win that helps secure a decentralized monetary asset, get
| paid for it, and heat your home which you would have done
| anyway, all with the exact same carbon footprint
| (assuming you're expending equivalent amount of
| electricity to just heat your home as originally
| planned). You've basically turned PoW into proof of
| heating where the miner gets paid and gets the benefit of
| heating his home on top. And incremental environmental
| impact is exactly 0.
|
| edit: quick google -> and here it is :)
|
| https://bitcoinminingheater.com
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Wow, this is actually amazing. In my country electric
| showers are really popular. They're literally just big
| resistances immersed in water. I wonder how long it'll
| take for them to put cryptocurrency miners in there.
| awrence wrote:
| My shower pays for itself :)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Now long showers aren't just relaxing but profitable too.
| Awesome.
| Empf wrote:
| But how much energy is used percentage wise for mining?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Technically a "perfect" miner would use zero energy
| (beyond microamps for driving the signal wires in the
| network cables), the heat comes from imperfect components
| that "waste" energy by turning it into heat.
|
| So the mining itself doesn't use any energy, it's just
| that instead of dumping power into a dumb coil of wire,
| you dump it into a smarter coil of wires and various
| components that produce some output (that happens to be
| valuable to the Bitcoin network and it rewards you in
| exchange) as a side-effect.
|
| For any given watt of electricity, the heat output is the
| same, just that with a miner you also get useful
| calculation results out of it.
| Empf wrote:
| That's not possible. Physically speaking
| rbarrois wrote:
| The only minor issue being that the materials used in
| fabricating the ASIC are likely more expensive (money and
| energy-wise) than those for a conventional heater!
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Because it also generates revenue via bitcoin. So it's
| "cheaper" insofar as the bitcoin is subsidizing the
| operation of the rig and, as a byproduct, heating the
| space.
| tzs wrote:
| Mitsubishi has heat pumps that maintain 100% heating
| capacity down to 23 (-5), and 76% down to -13 (-25).
| Fujitsu has similar technology.
| pengaru wrote:
| > A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the
| long run, but I didn't tell him that.
|
| Last I checked, heat pumps didn't produce assets of
| potentially increasing value as a side effect of moving
| heat around.
| teebs wrote:
| You could always buy Bitcoin with the money you saved
| pengaru wrote:
| Except you can purchase anonymity-preferred things more
| anonymously with the cryptocurrency you mined yourself...
| capableweb wrote:
| Since we're talking about efficiency, that'd be less
| efficient than just getting Bitcoins straight up.
| henvic wrote:
| Last time I checked Bitcoin was a speculation madness.
|
| https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/
| capableweb wrote:
| How does that come close to refuting the fact that using
| a Bitcoin miner as heating device also gives you
| Bitcoins, which the comment you replied to outlined?
| henvic wrote:
| The comment didn't outline this obvious point.
|
| It tried to compare it with heat pumps.
| phire wrote:
| 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.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| You can routinely get ~2 c kWh in Chicago:
|
| https://hourlypricing.comed.com/
| throwawayboise wrote:
| That's amazing. When I lived in Chicago in the 1990s the
| rates were some of the highest in the country, ~$0.11 or
| so at that time.
|
| Hourly rates/smart meters were not yet available to
| consumers (commercial customers could get different
| plans, IIRC).
| oliwarner wrote:
| Bloody hell, not in the UK. PS0.15/kWh is pretty
| standard. If you go wholesale there are microscopic
| portions where it dips as low as minus-PS0.10/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.
| phire wrote:
| That's not the total price.
|
| It doesn't include Transmission, distribution, taxes or
| whatever a "Capacity Charge" is.
| selectodude wrote:
| 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.
| marktangotango wrote:
| 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.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| On my last bill that added 4.2c per kWh.
|
| The bill previous was 3.9.
|
| The majority of those fees are fixed cost so don't scale
| linearly with usage.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| I doubt they are mining bitcoin, probably the police just
| making assumptions at this point.
|
| Also there is no way that this setup's electricity would cost
| that little in UK. The average cost of electricity bill for an
| average household is around PS700 a year. If they paid, this
| would literally be thousands if not 10k+ a year in electricity
| bills.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Man, I was hoping some graphics cards would be liquidated to
| cover the losses.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Can't graphics cards still be used profitably to mine other
| cryptocurrencies though?
|
| I don't follow this stuff too closely but my understanding is
| that graphics card prices are a good indicator here, and that
| GPU-powered mining is still acting to drive up prices.
| josefresco wrote:
| 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.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Is EIP 1559 expected to meaningfully affect mining
| profitability, especially for miners who already own the
| hardware?
| cinntaile wrote:
| 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.
| elif wrote:
| 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.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > 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 this won't happen?
| dieortin wrote:
| > 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.
| papercrane wrote:
| > 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.
| swiley wrote:
| This is not the first time substantial changes have been
| to crypto currencies (etherium or otherwise.) One recent
| change to bitcoin (I think the lightning network) was
| controversial enough to result in a fork (bitcoin cash.)
| There are mechanisms for this sort of thing.
| OJFord wrote:
| > 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.
| josefresco wrote:
| 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. Besides the initial hardware cost (which
| requires cash up front) how do you generate income to buy
| crypto on a regular basis?
| rtkwe wrote:
| 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.
| josefresco wrote:
| 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.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Hang on. You think the power company only asks for $0.10
| after you use $1 worth of power that month?
| josefresco wrote:
| My mistake, I'm a moron. The math is just worse, because
| you'd have to cash out some of your FAKECOIN for
| electricity. I'll accept the downvotes with dignity!
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| You'd have to cash out all of your FAKECOIN for
| electricity and still be out $0.10, with no FAKECOIN
| left.
| josefresco wrote:
| Clearly, mining and math on Friday is not for me lol
| scrollaway wrote:
| If you have cash, mining is unprofitable, and you want btc,
| there's a more profitable solution you're not seeing here.
| josefresco wrote:
| > If you have cash
|
| This is key. You can't "just buy BTC directly" if you don't
| have cash. Even if you have cash for the initial purchase
| of crypto, you then have no recurring income. The startup
| model is again relevant here as you're trading a short term
| loss, for the potential of a long term gain. Similarly, why
| don't VC's just invest in profitable, stable companies?
| scrollaway wrote:
| Very fair point.
| why_only_15 wrote:
| If you have to pay $50k in electricity to mine a $40k
| bitcoin, it would be better to just turn off the mine and buy
| the bitcoin directly.
| [deleted]
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Some industrial scale miners might have commitments to buy
| electricity at a certain rate. It could be more expensive
| to break a contract than to keep their equipment running
| when the exchange rate temporarily falls below
| profitability.
|
| Also not everyone has easy access to an exchange. Others
| may prefer to avoid the KYC paperwork, or simply be willing
| to pay a premium for freshly mined coins.
| gaff33 wrote:
| There's a healthy power market - so the providers can and
| should work out a way for their clients to exit their
| contract and for them to sell the electricity elsewhere.
|
| Sure the client might be liable for some loss-of-earnings
| fees but this really should be better for everyone than
| this.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Sure, but also take into account that a mining operation
| large enough to enter into electricity contracts probably
| has other obligations like facilities and staff. Overall
| it may not be worth the hassle to shutdown for what could
| be interpreted as typical exchange rate fluctuations.
| josefresco wrote:
| This assumes you have a source of income, outside of your
| mining operation.
| mewwts wrote:
| Not if you have all that money tied up in an old mining rig
| which has close to zero resale value.
| whall6 wrote:
| If all your money is gone because you spent it on a
| mining rig, how will you pay the electricity bill
| ekianjo wrote:
| Sunk cost fallacy
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Can mining rigs be repurposed for anything useful?
| OJFord wrote:
| Depends what they actually are, some 'mining rigs' are
| just PCs with lots of beefy GPUs, so yeah.
|
| Others are FPGAs programmed to compute the hash for
| whatever cryptocurrency (e.g. BTC is
| `sha256(sha256(x))`); they can be re-programmed to do
| something else instead.
|
| Others are ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated
| Circuits) based, physical chips designed to do nothing
| else but compute those hashes. So essentially 'no', but
| 'yes and they'd be very good at it' if you for some
| reason had another use for that particular hash function
| (lots and quickly).
|
| That's also a progression of cost & performance, by the
| way. As the difficulty increases GPUs get slower at
| finding whatever coin, and people (pay a bit more and)
| move to FPGAs, and then again to dedicated ASIC hardware.
| _joel wrote:
| Nope, the ones in the article are ASICs, so specifically
| for bitcoin. There are GPU based ones but the number of
| coins that you can mine with them is dwindling. You could
| probably reuse the beaglebone black or whatever little
| auxillary computer they're using but it's not really
| worth it. It's just e-waste.
| rtkwe wrote:
| 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.
| lippel82 wrote:
| No, if you need 50k for electricity, it does not matter
| how much money you put into the mining rig, you're better
| off buying 40k bitcoin directly.
| paulcole wrote:
| If you're spending $1500 to mine $1000 in BTC and are bullish
| about the future of BTC, why not just buy $1500 of BTC?
| josefresco wrote:
| Where do you get the $1500?
| wmanley wrote:
| Where do you get the electricity?
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| ... from working?
| SamBam wrote:
| But surely there's _some_ reality where only buying $1000
| BTC and just setting fire to another $500 is somehow more
| profitable, right?
| thinkmassive wrote:
| If you agree to purchase $1500/mo from the power company
| for 12 months, and they're going to bill you that no
| matter what, then losing $500/mo (and keeping BTC that's
| likely to increase in value eventually) is preferable to
| shutting down and losing $1500/mo.
| drewg123 wrote:
| It seems like an ideal way to use excess energy in grid-tied
| solar setups where the energy company is not incentivized to
| buy excess power. Or for non-grid tied solar when your
| batteries are full.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It seems like an ideal way to use excess energy in grid-
| tied solar setups where the energy company is not
| incentivized to buy excess power. Or for non-grid tied solar
| when your batteries are full.
|
| The ideal way to use excess energy is to do almost anything
| else _besides_ pointless proof-of-work computations (e.g some
| scientific distributed computing thing).
| toxik wrote:
| PoW isn't useless, in fact, the energy cost of PoW is
| proportional to its demand.
| wussboy wrote:
| To its "demand" perhaps, but not it's value.
| toxik wrote:
| And who pray tell decides its value? The central planning
| committee?
| RobLach wrote:
| As opposed to storing it?
| drewg123 wrote:
| Ideally you'd store it, but if your system is sized for the
| short days of winter, you may have excess energy in the
| summer that you cannot store once your batteries are full.
| Ardon wrote:
| It seems to me like you'd be doing a lot more good if you
| used that excess power for something like carbon capture.
|
| Bitcoin is surely pretty far down the list of useful
| applications of that excess power.
| boringg wrote:
| 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...
| avianlyric wrote:
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| Counter - How do you know the level of loss if you don't have
| visibility into it?
| bb611 wrote:
| (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.
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