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Increased Power Usage Leads to Mistaken Pot Busts for Bitcoin Miners
c0lo writes "The Canadian town of Mission, BC has a bylaw that allows the town's Public Safety Inspection Team to search people's homes for grow ops if they are using more than 93 kWh of electricity per day. There have allegedly been reports floating in IRC of two different cases of police showing up at a Bitcoin miner's residence with a search warrant. Ohio police and the DEA file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected of running an indoor pot growing operation. DEA Agent Anthony Marotta said high electricity usage does not always mean the residence is an indoor pot farm and has surprised federal agents. 'We thought it was a major grow operation ... but this guy had some kind of business involving computers. I don't know how many computer servers we found in his home.'"
You realize this was in Canada, right? High power consumption alone is insufficient to obtain a search warrant in the United States.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
You realize this was in Canada, right? High power consumption alone is insufficient to obtain a search warrant in the United States.
If you had read all the way to the third sentence, you would have seen:
Ohio police and the DEA file at least 60 subpoenas each month for energy-use records of people suspected of running an indoor pot growing operation.
Ohio is part of the US, and the DEA is a US Federal agency.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It is a scam. The bitcoin production difficulty is exponential, so the first few people who designed the system easily produced a big percentage of the total possible bitcoins (Over 6 million out of the total 21 million scheduled to be produced until the year 2140 are already taken) and now they are doing everything they can to give them value. So, those that "accept" bitcoins as currency are those that have a vested interest in them gaining value.
Basically you are using more and more power for the chance to produce a virtual "coin", so you are not producing value, just hurting the environment and if enough stupid people follow your example you will make a few scammers rich.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
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It's an attempted end-run around obtaining a search warrant, which would require more than just higher than average power consumption. The way it works is the municipality sends a bylaw inspector to a home for a "safety inspection" after someone notices that the power consumption at the residence is higher than it should be.
The inspector can't force his way in, but a bit of bullying and a stern "What have you got to hide?" or "I'll come back with a warrant and make your week difficult" is often all that's necessary, especially if the homeowner in question isn't actually doing anything wrong, and isn't used to dealing with stuff like this. The inspector brings along a police escort for "safety and security." Convenient.
The inspector looks around, and if he finds a grow op, well, hey, lookee here, the police just happened to be down the hall! Now they don't need a search warrant because it wasn't "a police search."
If the inspector finds nothing illegal, he (often but not always) presents the homeowner in question with a bill for the inspection, which can range from $5k to $10k.
Good news though: A few days ago, the BC Supreme Court has issued a giant "fark you" to the practice:
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It's what Harper wipes his ass with, every time he has a "great idea".
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It produces an ability to send "money" around for a very low cost. And as long as somebody is willing to buy them from you, bitcoins will have value.
If it's a scam, price on exchanges will go to zero, and you will have digital play money to send around.
Then, perhaps some multi-player online game will start to use it and price will again rise from zero to 0.01 per bitcoin, perhaps more.
After all, people are buying Zynga poker chips that you can never cash out. And Eve ISKs, and Wow gold.
The name of that online game for bitcons will be called "Economy online."
Not the least damaging, but pretty low on the list. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Go to http://www.mtgox.com/ to see the present USD exchange rate.
Right now mining is profitable since the value of bitcoins has recently gapped up from a buck to $7. But as more people mine, the algorithm must solve harder mining problems so in the longer term it is a self-regulating process. I have contemplated giving it a shot. To make a profit you have to build the machines as cheaply as possible and also live in an area with very cheap electricity.
As a side note, the whole affair is a big waste of resources, just like gold mining. However, it's this intrinsic cost to create the currency that makes it sound money - as opposed to fiat money, which can be made at no cost to the person authorized to print it.