According to a report by The Cool Down, authorities in Thailand shut down an illegal crypto mining operation that was going on across three houses in Pathum Thani province. 63 machines with a value of approximately $60,000 were connected by miners and they were taking electricity directly from the public grid. The stolen electricity was worth about $327,000, and the whole setup was being operated remotely. Locals grew suspicious after noticing the unusually high consumption of electricity. These kinds of mining operations are very risky and pose serious threats, especially in residential areas.
Crypto mining is a process that involves a lot of computers that perform mathematical problems to confirm transactions. A lot of electricity is needed for this process because it requires a large amount of computing power. When the problems are solved by miners, they earn digital coins like Bitcoin. As the crypto industry is regulated so much, many people do illegal crypto mining and they take electricity from public grids. These types of operations aren't just limited to Thailand because they have also been found in Malaysia, the UK, and Russia. It even caused a fire in Dagestan, Russia, when the circuit got overloaded.
Crypto criminals do not always mine in abandoned warehouses, as some cases have been seen when old factories were being used for mining, and illegal hydroelectric power sources were being used for it. One crypto criminal in Massachusetts even set up a crypto mining operation in a school crawl space, while shipping containers have also been reshaped into mobile crypto units because they can easily be transported to different locations. Crypto itself harms the environment, and unregulated crypto mining does so even more because of stolen energy.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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Crypto mining is a process that involves a lot of computers that perform mathematical problems to confirm transactions. A lot of electricity is needed for this process because it requires a large amount of computing power. When the problems are solved by miners, they earn digital coins like Bitcoin. As the crypto industry is regulated so much, many people do illegal crypto mining and they take electricity from public grids. These types of operations aren't just limited to Thailand because they have also been found in Malaysia, the UK, and Russia. It even caused a fire in Dagestan, Russia, when the circuit got overloaded.
Crypto criminals do not always mine in abandoned warehouses, as some cases have been seen when old factories were being used for mining, and illegal hydroelectric power sources were being used for it. One crypto criminal in Massachusetts even set up a crypto mining operation in a school crawl space, while shipping containers have also been reshaped into mobile crypto units because they can easily be transported to different locations. Crypto itself harms the environment, and unregulated crypto mining does so even more because of stolen energy.
Read next: Being Nice to AI Isn’t Just Cute — It Might Make the Robots Like You, Research Hints
