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In China, a man was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for stealing electricity from a railway station to fuel his Bitcoin mining operations (BTC), according to local paper The Paper. With the crazy amount of energy it spends, crypto-mining probably has its last days on the Chinese territory.

Facts

According to published legal documents, the sentence was announced on September 13 at the Datong Railway Transport Court in Shanxi Province in northern China. In addition to the prison sentence, the accused, named Xu Xinghua, was reportedly fined 100,000 yuan (about € 12,500). Xinghua would have purchased electricity from one of the Kouquan Railway's factories in November and December 2017 to supply its 50 Bitcoin miners and three electric fans that operated 24 hours a day. The document states that five of the cryptomassage equipment were damaged during this period. In April 2018, Xinghua reportedly successfully mined 3.2 Bitcoin, with a gain of 120,000 yuan (about € 15,000) and an electricity bill amounting to 104,000 yuan (€ 13,000). In addition to imprisonment and a fine, the court ordered Xinghua to cover the electricity costs and then requisitioned his mining equipment, reports The Paper.

A high energy consumption process

Mining crypto-currencies in general requires high-performance computers, a stable internet connection and a reliable supply of electricity. To be profitable, it would be necessary to invest heavily in equipment, cooling and storage. One of the biggest challenges in the mining business is the regular supply of electricity. It takes an average of 18,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity to mine a single BTC. In addition, several studies have already shown that cryptocurrency mining is becoming a monstrous energy resource vacuum , consuming more electricity than Ireland in one year . Bitcoin's mining network spends about 30.14 TWh a year, more than the energy consumed by 19 European countries.

A plague to be eradicated

Charges of a similar nature are not unprecedented in China. In June, an individual from China's Anhui Province was arrested for attempting to steal electricity to finance his allegedly "unprofitable" mining operations. The suspect allegedly stole 150 megawatts (MW) of electricity to power two hundred computers that he used to mine Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), a bill of more than 6,000 yuan (€ 750) a day. The country has become a superpower of cryptocurrency mining because of the abundance of energy and cheap equipment. Reports surfaced early this year that the Chinese authorities were willing to try to stifle the industry. The latest is a memo from the People's Bank of China (PBoC) addressed to a "high-level government finance regulator" stating that Bitcoin miners should leave the country as soon as possible. The regulator would subsequently have ordered local authorities to use all the means available in their arsenal - including "measures related to the price of electricity, the use of land, the taxation and the protection of property. the environment "- to put pressure on the miners to cease their activities. What do you think of the high electricity consumption of the crypto-mining activity? Is China right to want to bring measures of cessation? React in the comments!

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