[HN Gopher] Police Destroy 1,069 Bitcoin Miners with Big Ass Ste...
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Police Destroy 1,069 Bitcoin Miners with Big Ass Steamroller in
Malaysia
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-07-18 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| teslaberry wrote:
| oh the humanity!
| noxer wrote:
| "This is good for bitcoin" - Bitcoin people
| rasz wrote:
| What a waste, they destroyed ~1000 perfectly good 1KW PC power
| supplies :(
| userbinator wrote:
| Now the poor Chinese kids who will likely end up salvaging the
| bits have an even harder time...
|
| Making e-waste recycling harder doesn't really help anyone.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Exactly. Whenever I see something like this (e.g. Philippines
| police has also bulldozed some expensive cars recently) I
| always wonder if they actually are idiots or have extracted the
| valuable internal parts first.
| dandanua wrote:
| They are 100% idiots. In Russia, the government even destroys
| sanctioned food from the West
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06TZrP5Vg0s They just don't
| give a f
| pjc50 wrote:
| I suspect big conspicuous destructions like this are the
| reverse of US asset confiscation; destroying the thing is a
| signal that you're _really serious_ about stopping it, rather
| than just confiscating it and letting the police keep the
| proceeds.
| zamalek wrote:
| It also prevents those machines from magically "appearing"
| in a new mining op.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Perhaps there are reasons beyond my understanding why
| this is a wrong idea but if I were the head of the
| government I would rather officially sell the machines to
| a legitimate tax-paying mining operation or (if we are
| low on electricity and don't want any mining in the
| country) sell them on eBay to whatever a foreign party
| interested to get the funds for the budget. If the
| hardware would appear at an illegal mining facility in
| the country again I would just confiscate and sell them
| again making even more funds for the budget.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I'm sure by the end of your paragraph you began to see
| how this can be gamed to not help the country.
| Syonyk wrote:
| "Hello, Dear Sir! I am most foreign of foreigners,
| wishing to buy your Bitcoin Printing Mint Equipment, paid
| in your local currency, for export out of your fine
| country."
|
| "... really? You're the guy we seized these from, holding
| your finger under your nose like a mustache. To cover
| your mustache."
|
| If you object to the entire principle (or, at least, need
| to be seen objecting to the entire principle), destroying
| the assets in a visible public spectacle is the way to
| go.
|
| California had at least some high profile "street racer"
| destruction back in the day, and I don't believe any
| western government, upon seizing a big load of cocaine,
| goes about trying to figure out how they can unload it to
| someone else. At least, in easily tracked ways...
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Cocaine does have SOME medicinal use but corruption of
| the product by being mixed destroys any possibility of
| legit use. This isn't true of computers.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > really? You're the guy we seized these from
|
| Ok, let them buy it again and seize it from them again if
| they use it unlawfully. Double profit.
|
| > seizing a big load of cocaine, goes about trying to
| figure out how they can unload it to someone else
|
| Because there is an internationally agreed war on drugs.
| Cocaine (unlike meth which can be officially prescribed
| as Desoxyn in the US and heroine which also is used
| medically in some cases e.g. in the UK) is officially
| considered pure evil with no legitimate medical use (it
| can be used for good but in practice 99.9% of its use is
| abuse and even the 0.1% who use it for good also do that
| illegally).
|
| AFAIK there is no international agreement on fighting
| cryptocurrencies mining so far, the mining equipment (let
| alone the power supply units) are perfectly legal to
| manufacture, sell, buy, own and use (unless you actually
| steal electricity to power them) in many countries.
|
| Even such a totalitarian and unreasonably conservative
| country as Iran officially allowed (and taxed) mining
| until they found out they are running low on electricity.
| jlarocco wrote:
| The goal of a government isn't to make a big profit.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It is the goal of the gov't contractors that the gov't
| has hired to do the actual work of the gov't
| JackFr wrote:
| On the other hand big destructive displays like this are big
| signals that it's not police corruption and theft (like with
| the perverse incentives "civil forfeiture" creates in the US)
| [deleted]
| svgnright wrote:
| What are they doing about toxic coal plants?
|
| How can we minimize the external costs of energy production?
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| A well-placed hyphen would add some clarity to the title.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Big Ass-Steamroller
| wtfrmyinitials wrote:
| 37
| have_faith wrote:
| I thought you were mistaking referring to rule 37 instead
| of rule 34 until I saw the reference.
| yesenadam wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/37/
| paulpauper wrote:
| They could have resold them
| Animats wrote:
| The heavy equipment operator isn't very good. I suspect there's a
| cop driving the thing, and the guy hanging off the right is
| coaching him.
| Zababa wrote:
| I've never operated heavy equipment myself and have no idea
| what would be good or bad driving. Could you explain a bit
| more? I'm curious.
| jl6 wrote:
| Could obsolete Bitcoin ASICs be used to mount any sort of attack
| on SHA-256? There's a huge, huge amount of SHA-256 going on in
| Bitcoin at the moment - does the ASIC become useless once it is
| no longer used for Bitcoin, or could it be made to compute
| SHA-256 for some other nefarious purpose?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The collisions that ASICS search for are a few leading zeros,
| even with the whole Bitcoin network at your disposal I don't
| expect it's practical to find an exact 256bit collision.
| AareyBaba wrote:
| 3Blue1Brown has a convincing visualization of the size of
| 2^256.
|
| How secure is 256 bit security?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9JGmA5_unY
| mindslight wrote:
| If there becomes a surplus of power-inefficient hashing gear
| that is no longer profitable to operate, and the aggregate
| capability of that "dark" hashing power grows significant
| compared to the online hashrate, it could be used to carry out
| a 51% attack. But since ASIC efficiency gains are due to
| increasing hashrates (with roughly constant power density),
| this seems unlikely.
| tptacek wrote:
| Nope. No plausible amount of computational power that works in
| any way known to modern science will directly break SHA256.
| rospaya wrote:
| Even a quantum computer?
| [deleted]
| seibelj wrote:
| My understanding is that one-way functions are not broken
| by quantum computers.
| Filligree wrote:
| Depends on the function.
|
| But not sha256, no. I think you'd almost have to design
| it to be vulnerable, if you want that.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| My understanding is that in the general case you can see
| a quadratic speedup, so a 256-bit search space would
| suddenly collapse to what is effectively a 128-bit search
| space.
|
| Not a big deal by itself.
| tromp wrote:
| Bitcoin's hashcash PoW is not a 256-bit search problem
| though. At current difficulty levels, it's closer to an
| 86-bit problem, so Grover's algorithm reduces that to the
| equivalent of a 43 bit search space.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| It reduces the strength of SHA256 to that of SHA128,
| roughly speaking. 2^128 is still outside any practical
| reach whatsoever. (Google breaking SHA-1 after
| cryptanalysis still required some 2^60 operations iirc).
| ohhhhhh wrote:
| even if that did happen in the far future, there are
| quantum proof encryption methods
| unixhero wrote:
| Ask Grover, google it
| ben_w wrote:
| I always assume security is worse than the most effective
| known attack, but IIRC it's currently thought to be safe
| against quantum computers: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/992
|
| 2^166 ~= give a separate quantum computer that does as many
| QOPS as the the most powerful supercomputer does FLOPS to
| each human who has ever lived and have each of them run for
| a thousand times the age of the universe.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I'm looking forward to more news articles (I know it's debatable
| if Vice is real news) that use 'big ass' to describe anything of
| immense size.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Funnily enough, destroying miners is not going to make mining any
| slower. Just less energy intensive.
| jxf wrote:
| They couldn't at least reuse them? Are mining rigs useful for
| purposes other than mining?
| dawnerd wrote:
| Bitcoin asics are basically just ewaste once they're no longer
| useful or profitable. Since they're designed for just Bitcoin
| there's not really any other use. You can get older asics first
| cheap on the secondary market (although most sellers try to
| scam people not knowing previous generation miners are
| useless). Maybe useful if you want a unique way to heat a room?
| sfe22 wrote:
| Also expensive way to heat a room, and loud
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > expensive
|
| Compared to heat pumps? Yes. But compared to resistive
| electric heating it's just as good (if not better, since
| you could theoretically recoup some of the burned energy as
| cryptocurrencies).
| jxf wrote:
| Then I wish they'd recycled them instead of destroyed them.
| MiguelHudnandez wrote:
| An early step in recycling is usually shredding. It's
| better to remove big things made of known metals first
| (like copper wires and aluminum cases), but if they keep it
| all together it can still be processed.
| [deleted]
| detaro wrote:
| Depends. FPGA-based ones can be purposed for other things in
| principle, ASIC-based ones probably not, and afaik the latter
| is what's common for Bitcoin.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| My understanding is that FPGAs have been unprofitable for
| Bitcoin since the first ASICs were taped out.
|
| FPGAs are still profitable for other coins that are memory-
| limited. Bitcoin is just brute force compute.
| JCWasmx86 wrote:
| Maybe do some number crunching for science?
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Malaysia: Crunching achieved!
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Maybe they could be used to study the distribution of SHA256
| hashes, with an eye to uncovering vulnerabilities in the
| algorithm?
| dogorman wrote:
| I think you mean reuse, not recycle. The first step in most
| recycling processes is a shredder.
| jxf wrote:
| True enough; edited.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Most mining rigs have zero use for anything but mining.
|
| A few mining systems are GPU's (used for mining certain types
| of crypto), and those can be resold for other uses, although
| typically after being used for a few years for mining they
| might be damaged and no longer usable for other uses.
| ars wrote:
| > Are mining rigs useful for purposes other than mining?
|
| Nope. Other than maybe the power supply they are single purpose
| devices - they crack hashes, that's it.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Might be good for computing rainbow tables perhaps? But not
| much use for sha256 hashes.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| Title ..checks out! I wonder why the government did not just
| seize these miners and put them to use for the local economy? If
| it makes money, why not?
| ars wrote:
| Miners don't really make much money - the value of bitcoin is
| almost exactly equal to the cost of electricity to mine the
| bitcoin.
| geofft wrote:
| Also, because these rigs were apparently using stolen
| electricity, chances are that the only reason it was
| profitable for the owners to operate was that they _weren 't_
| paying market rates for electricity. So there's no way to
| legalize the operation and make it profitable (either because
| local electricity costs are higher than world average, or
| because these particular miners were inefficient, or
| whatever).
| Slartie wrote:
| That's simply not true. Electricity prices vary by a
| considerable factor, even among the cheapest sources. The
| Bitcoin price is identical, globally. These two can only
| coexist if there is a considerable margin to be made in
| mining, allowing for it to be profitable in a relatively wide
| span of electricity prices (of course still excluding the
| highest-priced sources, it is not that wide!).
|
| As far as my information goes, there were times when mining a
| >30k$ coin was possible for less than 4k$ in electricity, if
| you had access to really cheap sources. That's far from
| "don't really make much money".
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Bitcoin price is not identical globally as there is not one
| global market for trading fiat, not disagreeing Re:
| electricity prices, just nitpicking
| cesarb wrote:
| There might not exist a single global market, but
| whenever the Bitcoin price is different in these markets,
| there's an arbitrage opportunity. As a silly example, if
| the Bitcoin price was 4.000 USD in one market and 40.000
| USD in another market, you could buy one Bitcoin in the
| first one, sell it in the second one, and pocket the
| 36.000 USD difference. Buying Bitcoin in a market
| increases the price there (suppose there were 10 Bitcoin
| for 4.000 USD each and 12 Bitcoin for 4.200 USD each,
| after the first 10 Bitcoin are bought the price is now
| 4.200 USD), and selling Bitcoin in a market decreases the
| price there (it's the same dynamic in the opposite
| direction). After some time, the prices will converge.
|
| That is: as long as arbitrage between the markets is
| viable (for instance, it must be possible to move Bitcoin
| and fiat between the markets at a low enough cost), even
| though there's no single global market, the prices will
| tend to be close enough.
| celticninja wrote:
| Bitcoin price is identical globally. The price of bitcoin
| in USD/GBP/EUR is pretty much the same with respect to
| the values of each currency. There may be outliers, eg.
| Venezuela, but that's because it might be priced in the
| local currency, which is itself inflating at a rapid
| pace, so it loses value against bitcoin and the dollar or
| euro
| aqme28 wrote:
| If the government sees something as a public Bad[1], they're
| not going to put it back into the economy.
|
| If the government seizes drugs, they don't just redistribute it
| because it "makes money."
|
| [1]: Regardless of whether you agree with the government here.
| I also don't know if bitcoin mining is illegal or if it was
| just the stealing of electricity that was a problem.
| [deleted]
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| They didn't seize the miners because the miners are bad on
| their own. this isn't like drugs. the miners aren't banned
| here.
|
| They seized them because they were used in other crime, ie,
| stealing electricity.
|
| They could have recouped some of the cost of that stolen
| electricity by selling them to an outfit that actually pays
| for electricity.
| lvs wrote:
| Oh, and the government could deal all the heroin and guns it
| seizes too. What could possibly be wrong with that idea?
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| They didn't seize the miners because the miners are bad on
| their own. this isn't like drugs. the miners aren't banned
| here.
|
| They seized them because they were used in other crime, ie,
| stealing electricity.
|
| Do police not auction off the cars they seize for their use
| as a getaway car?
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| Presumably because they'd have to pay for power
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| Malaysia has some of the cheapest retail power on Earth.
|
| This is the usual performative nonsense by a foolish
| government. They could have easily sold them at auction like
| they do with all sorts of other seized goods. ASIC's go for a
| few thousand dollars each.
| ericd wrote:
| Perhaps it's among the cheapest because it's subsidized as
| a public good?
|
| EDIT: According to Wikipedia, it's heavily tiered and
| heavily subsidized, but also that it shouldn't be
| particularly helpful for mining, unless they're splitting
| it into a bunch of accounts to stay in one of the lower
| tiers:
|
| Domestic consumer pricing per kWh used, subsidized
|
| 4.95 @ 1 to 200 kWh
|
| 7.59 @ 201 to 300 kWh
|
| 11.73 @ 301 to 600 kWh
|
| 12.41 @ 601 to 900 kWh
|
| 12.98 @ 901 kWh onwards
|
| (exchange rate of 4.4 MYR to US$1 on 24 November 2016)
| pjc50 wrote:
| A common phrase in finance for doing some low-profitability
| activity that has a big downside risk is "picking up pennies in
| front of a steamroller".
| anyfactor wrote:
| Crypto mining really isn't for any country that doesn't have
| energy surplus and favorable political situation (exception
| being China of course).
| neatze wrote:
| If my memory does not fails me, this is quote from a book;
|
| When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital
| Management
| kgwgk wrote:
| The saying predates that book and LTCM:
|
| As one CRT trader said: "It's like picking up dimes in front
| of a bulldozer. You can make a lot of money, but you have to
| keep your eyes on the bulldozer."
|
| https://books.google.ch/books?id=OV07tT2nsLoC&pg=PA140&lpg=P.
| ..
| pjc50 wrote:
| Now there's a name from history. Their business model,
| selling lots and lots of out-of-the money options and collar
| trades, is one that people seem keen to replicate in crypto
| space. Profitable when volatility low, goes bang dramatically
| when it spikes.
| dmurray wrote:
| A great trade if you can get enough leverage that someone
| else is on the hook for much of the downside risk, as LTCM
| managed.
|
| Also, their famous trade was not actually selling
| volatility through writing options, but sla convergence
| trade in government bonds (short the most liquid one, which
| trades at a premium, get long a very similar bond which has
| the same cashflows but does not benefit from being blessed
| with the "most liquid" status). The crypto equivalent here
| is probably being long stablecoins, though even the best
| stablecoins have orders of magnitude less backing than
| Treasuries.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| hey super cool my dudes, I'm sure your department or community
| couldn't use a cool million from some university who wanted to
| research folding proteins, or any of a number of startups who had
| some machine learning needs... just the coolest, vroom vroom
| crunch
| version_five wrote:
| I has a similar initial reaction but my guess is it's not
| really feasible to repurpose these. I think (my knowledge is
| out of date) that dedicated miners are basically just asics
| designed to compute hashes really fast (presumably optimized
| for bitcoin blocks and cycling through a nonce). Unless another
| useful application is really close to that, you probably can't
| use them for it.
| dmos62 wrote:
| I'd wager that the idea was to have a PR stunt. Common good,
| etc., not really a priority here.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The AS in ASIC is "application specific" - unless you're
| researching how many kilowatt hours it takes to find a hash
| with 17 leading zeros, the machines serve little purpose.
| ars wrote:
| Bitcoin miners can't be used for anything else except cracking
| hashes.
|
| You could maybe save the power supply.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Looks like ASICs. These are worthless for anything besides
| mining BTC. Another counterpoint to Bitcoin. Ethereum has
| protections in place (had, Eth 2.0 changes everything again) to
| prevent ASICs.
| enlyth wrote:
| Protections in place which created a global shortage in GPU
| availability for machine learning and gaming, sounds like
| they didn't work great
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The countermeasures are "uses more RAM than is convenient".
| The ASIC counter-countermeasure was to add more RAM. The
| countermeasure was effective for 18 months.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Monero has more extensive ASIC-countermeasures in place:
| https://github.com/tevador/RandomX
| noxer wrote:
| And FBA consensus "coins" don't need countermeasures
| because they dont need any kind of proof of waste lottery
| to make progress.
| gfodor wrote:
| So they steamrolled a bunch of cases, power supplies, and
| RAM? Kind of ironic.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Not PC cases and not PC power supplies, and probably not
| PC RAM. ASIC-based miners are built like embedded
| systems. None of these parts could be reused for general
| purpose computation.
| ars wrote:
| Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_tcg9kOfkg
| Havoc wrote:
| Why not take them apart for recycling? Once they're mush that's
| harder
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(page generated 2021-07-18 23:01 UTC)