I was going to ask if these things are even profitable anymore, but I guess if you’re stealing the electricity it is.
Yeah but if their hardware is now confiscated, does it still pay off? How long do you need to mine until the hardware is paid for, assuming free electricity?
Bold of you to assume the hardware wasn’t also stolen
Lol
Poland gonna Poland.
Or, as they say in Germany: “Take a vacation in Poland. Your car is already there.”
Die Bild von vor 20 Jahren hat angerufen, sie will ihre Sprüche zurück
Still true though.
Still true though.
Also this is the part of the cycle where news about mining rigs catching fire and stealing power start creeping into the mainstream again. The price goes up, more people mine, more people do illegal shit to mine, mining equipment sells out, people get pissed and start whinging about graphics cards or some shit because crypto crypto blah blah so annoying and that gets in the news too. Then after no talk about any of this stuff for the last 2 years concern about bitcoins power usage starts making it back to the mainstream even though not much has changed except the price. This kicks off the feedback loop and the talk of the halving of rewards does the rounds and a new wave of investors are pulled in. Alt coins follow and people get rich, then the story’s of someone you know getting rich go around and people think, this is bullshit, I want to get rich and they get fomo and throw in their money and the run is in full swing. Elon makes his play and reveals his purpose for buying twitter is to use bitcoin and dogcoin as payment. Hysteria ensues and all fundamentals, ethics and common sense go out the window. Then when it feels like the craziness is normal the billionaires sell up and the crash begins. New comers are rattled and pull out straight away only to watch it go up again and to put their money back in and get wrecked again. Digital gold, utility, financial instrument, hedge against inflation and the money printer blah blah rinse repeat. Bitcoin is going to zero even though it’s literally gone on average from $1 to 50000 in 12 years or what ever, but yes it’s really risky somehow. It’s also dumb as shit but so is everything these days. People don’t give a shit what it is as long as they’re getting rich and people love talking about making money, not losing it. So when price goes up you hear about it whether you want to or not
At least they had heated floors for a little while. Fancy.
I suddenly want to build a crypto mining rig in my encapsulated crawl space.
I wonder how much pollution has been created for crypto.
Per Wikipedia:
As of 2022, bitcoin mining is estimated to be responsible for 0.1% of world greenhouse gas emissions.
Their source: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2022/a-deep-dive-into-bitcoins-environmental-impact/
That’s just bitcoin, I don’t know how that translates into all cryptos.
Now that’s still a decent chunk but not really a blip on the breakdown chart: https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
For example, landfills generate almost 2%.
Wow imagine two different kinds of garbage having such a different impact on the climate
At least crypto is allowing people send money without relying on paypal or other big tech.
Crypto was invented as a fully decentralized form of keeping and spending money, not as an “investment” (really, gambling) instrument as it is used now, so I fully agree crypto isn’t evil, it’s how it’s currently used that’s a problem. Proof-of-work though is evil, due to its energy requirements. Thankfully some coins (e.g. ethereum) are switching to proof-of-stake which doesn’t waste energy for nothing.
Proof of stake is making the crypto centralized by the stake holders, also the ethereum blockchain size is huge compared to Bitcoin, making it even more centralized because less people are willing to volunteer except the stake holders.
I’m not sure about the social dynamics with proof of stake, you might be right but, why aren’t people willing to volounteer? Is there a limit to how many stakeholders there are? or a minimum (large) stake, meaning you must be rich?
Anyways, one thing I can say for sure: these dynamics already exist with proof-of-work: miners started using specialized hardware, raising the barrier to entry for the “small guys”, so instead, people join large mining pools which are becoming more and more centralized.
So at least proof-of-stake is not worse in this respect.
People aren’t willing to volunteer because of the hardware requirements for running a full Ethereum node and 32 ETH for staking. There are centralized staking pools which everyone uses, where people trusting those pools with there money.
And if a Bitcoin mining pool starts doing something suspicious, the miners can quickly switch to another pool. The miners have a choice in this case.
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Hey did you notice how people only give a shit about bitcoins emissions when the price goes up? Funny that
Or alternatively in actual first world countries you can just send money to people through your bank, for free. Hell in some third world countries they fuckn text their money around.
Until the banks (or the government, or someone more powerful than you) decides you shall not use your money and those funds get blocked. Or maybe you don’t want to tell your bank, or the government, what you do with your money. Yes, there’s cash, but it’s going away. And please don’t tell me “you have nothing to hide, so nothing to worry”, there’s plenty of legitimate reasons for privacy.
If people stopped thinking about crypto as “EaZZy MoNey” and instead, just treated it for what it was meant for, as a currency, it could actually be useful. But please let’s get rid of proof-of-work and energy waste.
Yeah use those "to big to fail’ having banks be integral to the system is a definition to first World. Not sure that’s the dis you hoped it to be. Haha, you don’t have banks too big to be capitalist they have to be socialized…
Zelle (/zɛl/) is a United States–based digital payments network run by a private financial services company owned by the banks Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.
A lot, but the solution exists, and it doesn’t require getting rid of crypto coins, it’s called proof-of-stake. Then maybe people can stop building stupid mining rigs …
This feels like it should be satire.
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Oh boy… so there’s this thing called a stock photo and…
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Not the same one, but basically the same crime committed elsewhere and this time with a few photos, though they could be better.
You don’t actually need that many computers to draw a stupid amount of power. For example if you’re willing to run a Peltier cooling system… which burns ridiculous amounts of electricity to rapidly transfer heat out of the GPU and into the surrounding air (where more power will be consumed by the building’s HVAC system working it’s ass off to cool the room even when it’s snowing outside)…
I could easily see just several mining rigs burn 20,000 watts. Run that for an entire year, and you’re looking at an electricity bill running up to tens of thousands of dollars.
You wouldn’t be able to draw much more than that without major upgrades that would be very difficult to do stealthily.
This is worse than the time my flatmate turned out to be growing hydroponics in the ceiling.
Then, CPD called the US Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security to help safely remove the equipment and investigate the mining rig’s origins.
The Coast Guard?
Electricity pirates. Arr.
They need to keep the criminals at bay.
The description does make it sound almost like it was growing through the floors :-)
Crypto IS a cancer
“The bitcoin is coming from inside the house!”
Chain of GPUs, roped down the duct?
One hell of a strange and interesting work story alright
It’s not any court. It’s a Supreme Administrative Court - highest court instance in Poland dealing with crimes of administration
kurwa
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s currently unknown how long the rig was running because the illegal operation went undetected, partly because the computers used were connected to the Internet through their own modems rather than through the court’s network.
The Supreme Administrative Court is the last resort for sensitive business and tax disputes, but no records seem to have been compromised.
Judge Sylwester Marciniak—the chairman of the Judicial Information Department of the Supreme Administrative Court—told TVN24 that the discovery of the cryptomine “did not result in any threat to the security of data stored” in the court.
The Department of Homeland Security investigated for three months, and a former employee who had been serving as assistant facilities director for the town, Nadeam Nahas, was accused of vandalizing the school and stealing at least $17,492 in electricity to operate the cryptomine.
According to Boston news station WHDH, police traced SKU numbers on ductwork that Nahas allegedly installed to keep the rig from overheating.
Nahas reportedly got “nervous” when confronted with evidence allegedly showing that he purchased the materials from Home Depot, as well as his posts on the social platform formerly known as Twitter, which cops found indicated his strong interest in cryptocurrency.
The original article contains 532 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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