Hundreds of Bitcoin & Ethereum Mining Rigs Seized by Chinese Police Raid

New report just in about the collection of more than 200 computers that have been seized by Chinese Police. The computers used to mine BTC and Ether were allegedly steeling electricity. According to a report made by China’s own state press agency, Xinhua, police in the province of Ahhui, Eastern China collected the computer tech after they were alerted to it being used to steal high rates of electricity from a local power grid.

The subject who was apprehended for stealing the electricity goes by the surname of Ma and has supposedly stolen more than 150,000 kW hours-worth of electricity in a little over four weeks. The investigation is still ongoing as police attempt to detect the exact numbers connected to the mining operation that ended up short-circuiting the electricity’s power bill.

Cryptocurrency mining operations are known to use high amounts of energy, processing miners that are rewarded later with newly mined coins used to create blocks that validate transactions and then to ad them to the blockchain. Profits come in the form of mixed altcoins that exceed the amount of power expended during the mining operation.

Ma, being accused of the theft, has told to chinese police he bought the equipment back in April prior to knowing the true cost of power it would take to run the operation. The daily costs are about $923 USD which is considerable. He claims to have made zero profits since starting the operation after he was caught by police.

In another case that was similar in another province in China, they confiscated 600 BTC miners. This happened in April, after a power company noticed the strange spiked occurring in the electricity usage. More than six people were involved in the mining operations where the main of a local power junction box has supposedly been altered.

Even though the large shock has hit the local cryptocurrency industry in what’s been called the world’s largest market. China is still home to a huge majority of the BTC mining hashrate because of the ultra-cheap labor and massive amounts of electricity, speaking relatively.

The capital of Beijing has since then changed their approach, discouraging the government from supporting local cryptocurrency mining operations, instead cracking down on them. The scrutiny has even led to a huge change in the way miners are being looked at in the country. Now people are looking towards countries like Switzerland for their power supply as well as states like Washington in the USA.