Watch 1k illegal Bitcoin PCs get literally steamrolled, experience justice | Hacker News Reader

Watch 1k illegal Bitcoin PCs get literally steamrolled, experience justice

pcgamer.com

12 pointsvitabenes30 comments

Can't say i'm happy about perfectly functional hardware just being destroyed.

There is a game theory argument that the police cannot be allowed to sell these, or it would incentivize them suddenly find lots of "illegal pc's" as a means of increasing their budget. But surely there must be a better solution than steamrolling them?

Is destroying seized property the default thing to do there? If they siezed a perfectly working car, does that get crushed as well?

A car can be used for all kinds of legal activity, unlike an ASIC which relies on stolen electricity to be profitable.

>unlike an ASIC which relies on stolen electricity to be profitable.

Where are you getting this from? Are you saying the majority of bitcoin mining operations around the world operates on stolen electricity?

While I’m not sure how old these ones, older bitcoin ASICS are indeed only profitable on stolen power. If it produces 1c worth of magical internet money per kWh, then it has only illegal uses.

If you have solar power, you sometimes generate more electricity than you use. You can sell that power to the local power distributor, or store it in a battery. Both have efficiency loss issues (you may only get wholesale from the power company, and batteries wear out). Or you can use that excess power to generate cryptocurrency, and use that to buy more power from the utility provider when you need.

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM_SE5O28pM

They're ASICs, they're worthless for anything except mining certain kinds of crypto, given current prices not only would reselling them be questionable from a pragmatic perspective but it would be essentially encouraging the kind of illegal activity (i.e. electricity theft) which caused them to be confiscated in the first place.

Wonder if you could repurpose them to crack password hashes? (though even if so they'd still be better off steamrollered)

Presumably the power supplies could be repurposed?

>experience justice

I don't get it, did the "Bitcoin PCs" commit any crimes? Can an inanimate object even be responsible for crimes?

Their owners did.

The seized property is destroyed to show they're serious about punishing this kind of crimes (stealing $2M worth of electricity via bitcoin mining). If you want to mine bitcoins, pay the bills or build your own power plant.

I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of gamers cried somewhere.

Gamers could legitimately cry if they were video cards getting crushed but these are ASICs, all they can do is mine crypto, they're worthless for anything else so why not crush them?

The power supply within them is not worthless.

I find it more concerning that the police can just do this without due process.

You can't dispose these without due process. Not sure whre you're getting you're ideas from.

Nowhere in the article does it mention a jury trial or judge.

Good riddance.

What a waste.

I agree, what they were doing before being destroyed was a huge waste.

such a waste

A waste of what?

These were ASIC computers which were stealing electricity, all they can do is mine crypto, so what else are they good for except getting squashed?

Bulldozing makes it harder to recycle. This also decreases supply of miners (though perhaps not materially) making it more expensive to mine, raising the price of Bitcoin, creating more incentive for electricity theft.

"raising the price of Bitcoin"

Get back to me when that happens

>This also decreases supply of miners (though perhaps not materially) making it more expensive to mine

Only in the short term. Difficulty adjustment makes the total mining power irrelevant over the long run.

They didn't do anything useful before being crushed. Destroying them is a net gain as they cant waste electricity any more.

>They didn't do anything useful before being crushed.

That's your assessment, which doesn't really matter as long as there's still demand for mining ASICs. If that's the case it really is a waste because destroying them will just cause the demand to be satisfied via newly produced ASICs instead

That assumes that demand is constant. Their hope is that frequent images of mining ASICs being steamrolled will reduce demand.

Will it? ASICs seem to be totally legal there (and most other places in the world). The part that was illegal was stealing electricity. "Hoping" that "frequent images of mining ASICs being steamrolled will reduce demand" is wishful thinking at best.

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