"Stealing electricity" to mine Bitcoin is suspected of being a crime, and serious offenders will be sentenced!

With the birth and surge of Bitcoin, mining fever began to rise. However, as more and more people participated, a practice of "stealing electricity" for mining began to emerge. In recent years, news reports of stealing electricity for mining have been almost non-stop.

Just yesterday (December 22), CCTV News reported another news about stealing electricity to mine Bitcoin. The news said that the Tangshan police in Hebei Province, in conjunction with the national power department, recently launched a special operation to combat electricity theft and found that using Bitcoin mining machines to steal electricity has become a new type of electricity theft crime in recent years. So far, 6,890 Bitcoin mining machines and 52 high-power transformers have been confiscated.

It is said that most of these Bitcoin mines are converted from containers, and they mainly steal electricity to mine Bitcoin by privately connecting transformers.

How much electricity does mining Bitcoin consume?

Bitcoin mining is very different from mining in real life. With the increasing number of miners, the difficulty of mining Bitcoin has increased. Mining has long since changed from the initial individual mining to today's mining machines.

A "mining machine" is actually a high-power computer, but its power consumption is much greater than that of an ordinary computer, and it can even be described as astonishing. A Bitcoin mining machine needs to run 24 hours a day, which consumes nearly 40 degrees of electricity.

Therefore, in addition to the high hardware cost, electricity bills are also a huge expense. Even though Bitcoin is expensive, the cost of mining one Bitcoin is not low at all, which greatly reduces the value of Bitcoin. Therefore, many people have set their sights on the "electricity bill".

In Russia, the average annual electricity cost of Bitcoin mining is as high as $400 million, and miners' electricity bills were once recommended to be increased. In my country, although the "mining" industry is mainly small and medium-sized, nearly 10,000 devices are considered large-scale.

According to foreign media, China has become the world's largest Bitcoin mining farm. Abundant energy and low electricity costs have undoubtedly made China the first choice for mining. According to relevant data, about 70% of the world's Bitcoin is produced in China, especially in the western Sichuan plateau, where there are many mines.

Mining is legal, stealing electricity is illegal

Many friends may feel puzzled. Hasn’t mining always been legal? How did it suddenly become illegal?

Here the editor has to have a good talk with you all. First of all, stealing electricity for mining is illegal does not mean that mining is illegal. The illegal behavior here refers to "stealing electricity", and stealing electricity has always been an illegal act.

Stealing electricity is theft, which is against the law and morality. However, this is actually related to the nature of mining. It seems to be high-tech, but in fact it is a typical resource-dependent industry. In recent years, the mining industry has become increasingly weak, and mines in many regions have been "shut down", and there are many reports of mines being resold.

This year, the listing of Canaan Creative, the second largest giant in the mining machine industry, seems to have brought a glimmer of hope to miners. However, in its prospectus, it avoided the main industry of "mining machine manufacturers". This shows that the mining industry is still grim. Although mining has not been defined as an illegal act for the time being, if the behavior of stealing electricity for mining becomes more and more serious, it is hard to guarantee that mining will no longer be legal one day.

It seems that as long as there is an industry that requires electricity, there will always be people who try to take advantage of it, not to mention Bitcoin mining, which consumes so much electricity. However, the law is long and wide, and the wool of socialism is not so easy to take. In addition to fines, serious cases will also face imprisonment.

Bitcoin is valuable, but freedom is even more valuable. Stealing electricity to mine Bitcoin is really not worth the loss. Don't lose the big picture for the small. (Bit Finance Network)