Hundreds of Banned Crypto Miners Were Siphoning Power at China's State Firms

China's drive to root out cryptocurrencies has uncovered hundreds of miners who were using electricity at public institutions, a development that comes as the nation struggles with a power crunch. From a report: Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces recently started targeting miners who were consuming the resources of state-owned enterprises, government agencies, and universities and research institutes, according to a government statement and media reports that did not name the entities. Jiangsu found about one-fifth of some 4,500 internet protocol addresses associated with illegal mining activity belonged to public institutions, according to the media outlet The Paper, which cited provincial communications authorities. Some 260,000 kilowatt hours of electricity were being used per day, the newspaper added. Cryptominers typically link their equipment to cloud services called mining pools to verify transactions on blockchains, allowing their physical locations to be traced. That would lead investigators to accounts with electric companies.

The Zhejiang government published a statement on an official social account that included photos of equipment seized in raids, adding that 184 IP addresses were suspected of involvement in illegal mining exploiting public resources. 'The rapid upgrading of mining hardware and fierce competition in computing power have resulted in massive energy usage, which is contrary to the carbon peak and carbon neutralization goals of the whole province as a major energy importer,' the statement said.

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