600 computers to mine bitcoins and other virtual cryptocurrencies have been stolen from Data Center’s in Iceland, to which the police call this as nation’s largest series of robberies.
Last time we saw the price of mining hardware like GPU is increasing due to boost in sales for mining hardware.
The computers that have not yet been found they have a value of $ 2 million. But if the equipment is used by thieves to create new bitcoins, they could get a massive profit, and bitcoins would be untraceable. The only way would be caught, is during the usage of enormous amount electricity to operate the equipment.
The police commissioner in the southwest part of the Reykjanes peninsula where two of the robberies took place, Olafur Helgi Kjartansson, said:
This is a grand theft on a scale unseen before.
Everything points to this being a highly organised crime.
Eleven people were arrested, including a security guard. A judge of the Reykjanes district court ordered Friday that two people remain in custody. Three of the four robberies took place in December and the fourth in January, but authorities did not release the news earlier in the hope of catching the thieves.
Bitcoin, being a cryptocurrency that is not tied to banks or government and its high price. It has become a victim of thieves who find it much easier to steal, unlike physical assets. But in this case they went a step further and went in search of the necessary equipment to be able to mine them. Now the desire for cheap electricity has led the great mining pools migrate to Iceland. But also because of the climatic conditions that provide the cold, an ideal element to cool any type of operation naturally .
The police are looking for stolen equipment by monitoring electrical consumption across the country in the hope that the thieves will be caught. Usually the intensive uses of electricity reveal where illegal bitcoin mining is taking place. This is the Reason why, authorities this week have called Internet providers, electrical and storage space units to report any abnormal activity.
Source : nypost
