Miguel Lopez In Russia, some people were doing something called “crypto mining” illegally, and the government shut down their operations. They took away their special machines for the job and sent the miners to court. The government is also looking into making breaking these laws very serious even with punishments like going to prison.
Illegal Crypto Mining Cost Russian Villages Millions of Dollars
Authorities have recently discovered some illegal places where people are mining cryptocurrency in two different areas of Russia called Siberia and Southern Russia. In one of these cases, the people running the mining operation were accused of stealing electricity.
Recently, some people who work for an electricity company in the Stavropol Krai region found a big mine full of special machines. The police were called and they took away 66 of these machines. This was announced on Friday from Rosseti North Caucasus.
An individual from the village of Nadezhda set up some special equipment and electric connection in their house which could cause criminal problems. The electricity that was used by this illegal setup cost over 6 million rubles (which is about $78,000 US dollars) and it was estimated that about 954,000 kilowatts were used.
Source: Rosseti
The police in the town of Shelekhov, Irkutsk Oblast, went to a school after the power company reported that too much electric was being used and there was a loud noise coming from the roof. The officers found 25 machines that were put there by the electrician who worked at the school and his friend who understood computers.
In Siberia, there’s a special place called the mining capital of Russia. In this area, some people try to make money by mining cryptocurrency on their own which takes place in basements, garages and dachas (a type of house) and they take advantage of much cheaper residential area electricity costs. This caused so many problems that in February this year, over 1,000 people got sued formining crypto at home!
The police in Tomsk, a town in Siberia, have filed charges against seven people who connected some computers to the power grid illegally. They damaged the power supplier by 24 million rubles (about $310,000).
Russian officials recently made it harder to do unauthorized mining. There is a law being discussed that would punish people, known as “gray miners”, who try not to pay taxes on their crypto-currency. This has caused some concern in the cryptocurrency world.
The Russian government could soon make it harder to use secret crypto mining activities. Share your opinion on the subject by writing in the comments section below.
