Agents seize equipment intended for the manufacture of cryptocurrencies, fraudulently, in a Santiponce ship. /
The National Police dismantles a facility dedicated to bitcoin mining, which stole electricity from a Sevillian town
In the placid and historic Santiponce, a town of nine square kilometers in Seville and just over 8,000 inhabitants, something more than corn and sunflowers was secretly grown. As they usually do in raids on drug traffickers, the members of the National Police knocked down the armored door, wearing balaclavas and a mallet.
Inside the bunker there was neither a cannabis plantation nor a synthetic drug laboratory. There were computers, dedicated to cryptocurrency mining. This is the first bitcoin farm to be dismantled in Spain. And his story was brief.
In a world scenario in which the 20 signatures of ethereal coins consume more than twice what is spent in a city like Madrid each year, the illegal farm dismantled in Andalusia was in an “early phase of operation”, at the end of the value chain of the ‘blockchain’, the complex system that gives value to digital activities. It wasn’t “profitable” yet, police say. it’s a statement.
Upon entering the “farm”, the agents found a large shelf with 21 interconnected PC towers and a convoluted and ingenious electrical system that was illegally hooked up to the electrical network, with “a very high amp draw”, the police indicate.
This bitcoin farm that was trying to operate at zero electricity cost was betrayed by the electricity meters of this small town. The variation in electricity consumption aroused the suspicions of the authorities, who began the ‘Troy’ operation. The trail led to some old stables.
powerful equipment
The miners had invested about 50,000 euros in the installation, the police calculate. More than half in Asic computers, and the rest invested in a piece of special equipment –Mining Rig, in computer lexicon– and powerful fans and cooling systems, which prevented the machines from overheating.
The ‘farmers’ of the code earned about 3,500 euros per month with the creation of bitcoins, according to the investigations. A profit that would have evaporated with the high costs of energy. The fraud to the public coffers in energy consumption is around 2,000 euros per month, according to the electricity company. Nor did the resounding devaluation of cryptocurrencies favor them, which in recent weeks have lost up to 50% of their value.
Cryptocurrency mining is an activity that has been criticized by analysts and environmentalists, and governments are already trying to regulate the activity where crypto farms are installed. In Spain, the activity is marginal. It accounts for 1% of global mining, according to a study by the MIT Environment and Energy Policy Research Center, published last year. The next police step will be to go down the digital route to naming the “miners.”
