UK Police Uncovers Bitcoin Mining Hideout
We hold up our hands in promise to use this story to validate bitcoin mining. If crime hadnt been involved, this story would have been pretty hilarious. But, even if this story makes you laugh, stop it; we are dead serious here.
An Anonymous Tip
The UK police in the West Midlands area received an anonymous tip regarding a warehouse. The tip says there are a lot of movements in and around the house at various times every day. The house also has clearly observable wiring and ventilation ducts. The Birmingham mail also revealed that when the police flew a drone over the place, it picked significant heat sources. Thus, it is only natural to assume that the warehouse could be a subtle disguise for a cannabis farm. The west midlands police department said these signs were the common attributes of any cannabis factory.
But it was with dismay that the police department discovered that no one was staying in there. The BBC reported that; “officers received a tip-off about a Sandwell location, the great bridge industrial estate. The west midlands police department raided the location on May 18, 2021, but to their amazement, they only found more than 100 computer units instead of cannabis plants.”
We can safely assume that the location was a bitcoin mining place since those ‘computer units’ were ASIC miners. However, while it seemed funny, we couldn’t laugh because a crime was committed. The police department mentioned above reported that “after seizing the IT equipment and making further inquiries, it discovered that the warehouse had bypassed electric supply to steal hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of electric supply to power their computer units.”
Cheap Energy or Stolen Energy and Jail
If it is your first time reading this kind of story, it is highly likely that you will demonize bitcoin mining. But the truth is criminals exist in all walks of life and businesses. There would always be those who want to get ahead fast. Hence, they disobey the law, cut corners and skip steps. This story proves that such people rarely achieve anything tangible. They will always meet their end sooner or later.
Another way to interpret this incident is that bitcoin miners expend a lot of energy. Such energy will be highly costly in big cities to the extent that mining operations might result in huge losses. Those entrepreneurs have two choices – find cheap energy or steal the energy and be jailed for it. Now, the real question is, “is there any cheap energy anywhere?” the simple answer is that there will always be cheap energy wherever there is surplus energy. Some areas are even excess energy that they waste part of it. Therefore, it is economically viable for those bitcoin mining entrepreneurs to relocate to such sites. They have no choice, and their movement becomes inevitable.
BTC/USD chart. Source: TradingView
Mining Bitcoin with Stolen Energy Isn’t New
Even if you don’t believe us, at least you will believe the west midlands police, whose spokesperson, sergeant Jennifer Griffin said, “it’s not what we expected to find! It has all the signs of a cannabis site set-up. From my understanding, this is the second crypto mine that we have raided in this area. Also, I know that cryptocurrency mining isn’t illegal at all. Still, it is a crime to extract electricity from the mains supply to power the mine.” thus far, no arrests have been made because no one was inside the facility when the police raided it. The police only confiscated the equipment and will keep the investigation ongoing.
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