Chinese police authorities confiscated 200 computers with which a suspect mined bitcoins and Ethereum with stolen electrical resources.
According to the Xinhua news agency, the police authorities in Anhui province kept the equipment of an individual identified as Ma, with whom he had been mining cryptocurrencies under a consumption regime of more than 150,000 kilowatts per hour for a period of one month. .
For its part, a report issued by Hanshan County revealed that Ma had been using resources from a stolen or short-circuited port, in order to significantly reduce electrical costs.
Ma told the state police that he bought these equipment during the month of April, with the idea of making money through mining. However he discovered that the cost of energy was more than 6,000 yuan equivalent to about 927 dollars.
When Ma was caught by the authorities, he had not yet obtained any benefit.
Bitcoin and Ethereum mining are energy-intensive processes that depend on high-performance computers. Bitcoin and Ethereum are different versions that use Blockchain technology.
The Financial Services Agency (FSA) issued commercial improvement orders to six cryptocurrency exchange houses that operate in the country.
BitFlyer, QUOINE, BTC Box, Bit Bank, Tech Bureau and Bit Point are the six exchange houses that received these orders from the FSA this Friday, June 22, whose main objective is for operators to improve their internal audit systems and user protection, in addition to raising their demands regarding the identification of their customers (KYC) and against money laundering (AML).
This blockade of international exchange houses is carried out in response to the supposed financial risks that the cryptocurrency trade represents for the country. Thus hardening the regulation on Bitcoin and other digital cryptocurrencies in order to control all financial "threats", closed exchanges and negotiation stopped.
Also, the government of China has given itself to the task of establishing ever stricter regulations both to exchange houses, as well as projects to launch ICOs and other derivatives of decentralized digital products.
Even so, reports and studies have shown that despite the measures, trade with cryptocurrencies and associated crimes continue to be on the rise in Asian territory, a situation that will not change in the near future.
As a result of the measure, the websites related to cryptocurrencies and Blockchain have automatically disappeared from the Baidu search engine and the Weibo social network, according to some local media.