Topic: Stealing Electricity the next big thing? (Read 4280 times)

it stories like that, that put things into perspective.  here we (i know i am) are complaining about the cost of power to mine...when some could care less about mining.  they just want to survive and have to take measures that we joke around about.  May GOD bless those who are really in need.  

sorry for the sermon guys, back to bitcoin talk...damn difficulty ..right ? LoL

I actually know a number of people who are stealing electricity. In some parts of the world the access to relays is quite easy and everyone who can climb a pole can connect their own wire. The only risk you're taking is a possible fine and electrocution if you're not careful
It's also worth mentioning that these people I know of are poor and stealing only few hundred watts to light the house and cook food. If they started to mine somebody would notice it sooner or later.

love the idea...lol

Replacing the fans on a WC with a S1...had a good time reading this post but could be true...
I guess next time to go to a Highway rest rooms,  and see behind from the fan a greed led
light flashing you will be alarmed!!!!
hi hi

this thread is funny.  many indoor pot growers hire an electrician to gypsy rig the home to not detect the electricity being used to heat the crops.  the way many of the grow houses get discovered is that at night the helicopters fly overhead and use infrared to detect abnormal heat.  many growers turn the house's lamps off at night and only keep them on during the day.  it's tempting to rent a home or to use your own home and set it up to do the same, but instead of growing pot you mine.  that's probably the best way to steal electricity...or so i have heard (as i strike the Austin Powers pinky to the face pose)

Good idea.  How about turning S3 as actual shoes?  Chinese women love high heel.  S3 as a shoe give them an extra 7 inches in height, wamth, and modern. 

Chances are you legal bills will be much larger then any mining profits once caught....

If you don't like you electricity bill look into hosting.  Will save you long term compared to illegal activity.

Welcome to many countries already doing this worldwide.

Don't have to farm bitcoin to see that going on here in Indonesia. The PLN has been waging a war with fraud for countless years with regards to GREY billing. Where some customers get a hefty discounts if you pay the right people. People do get caught and do face jail time. Good luck. Have you looked into BIOGAS?

only way it would make sense is to buy 100 s1's and cut the pipe above the power meter booya free power!!!

Heating devices are the clear winner because they can actually be beneficial for the people. I'd argue space heaters are obsolete technology given there's now a substantial second-hand ASIC market. I've always thought the idea of, in the future, having things always hashing just because they have a computer in them and they're otherwise idle is remarkably dumb, but if the device's job is to literally provide heat, it's remarkably dumb for it not to hash.

Oh man this thread is too funny! 

However I could see someone running an extension cord from the neighbor's house. I would bet money we see that in a news article within the next year. Expanding on that I could see someone in an apartment building cutting holes in the drywall and tapping into the neighbor's electric from the back of the wall.

I bet some jail time would be attached to that. "Theft of services" I believe is the correct term.

Why not install a spy-hole camera on the miner and have a 2nd source of income from "live foot warmer webcam".  It's already got it's own internet connection!

The best thing to do is start a program that gives away free S3's to women in offices as "Foot warmers".   You go and install them personally and hook them up at the offices.  Women love space heaters for their feet.  Free BTC for you.

Very interesting post,got a lot of laughs . This will and I would guess already probably happening.  Not the Starbucks scenario but techie friends of auto mechanics , carpenters  and other fields will probably try to use the power available there.

As mentioned philipma1957(which seem to be scheming btw haha )  there are numerous possibilities if you think about it but is the risk worth the reward ? More than likely not besides its unethical, atleast give the victim a 10% of the profits, then it would be considered a "partnership"

Think about this.... they find a unknown electronic device... with cords... and antenna.... i can see this going bad.  Chances are they will not know it's a bitcoin miner, there are alot of worse case scenario.   I truly hope no one resorts to this.

I see professional hosting as a much better option, no crime.  And also if your lucky hosting them at your home.

I do see grey areas like colleges and university's not liking mining and coming out with rules in future.  A lot of apartment complex's have a peek electricity cost where. it's locked in (one in the past i had was 25 dollars fee).  This was obviously meant for heating/cooling of apartment.  I didn't mine in it as it just was not worth it at the time as I was doing lots of GPU's and had them hosted elsewhere.  Also dorms i can see college kids buying throwing one under the bed or in closet in dorm room.

I hope theft is not the future or outdated gear.   I like that Bitmain is doing a upgrade kit that is a great reuse of hardware, and cuts cost a little.

The problem there is the cost to setup. It's very expensive to only produce a few bucks worth of power a month.

How about the green energy  ?
I heard rumors that a wind energy generator can operate everywhere if its height is at least 20 meter.
Can someone confirm this?

This is a better scenario:

You are going to divorce your wife.  She is going to get the house as a divorce settlement.

Before you hand the keys to her,  you hide 50 s3 in the attic and turn them on to start mining.  Your ex wife is clueless so she would not know why her electricity is so high each month.  She will ask you why.  You tell her that you will help her fix the problem.  You came to the house and found 50 s3 in the attic.  Your ex wife thanks you and you guys got together.

That would be committing a crime, if you were found out, you'd be in deep trouble. 

That is true.  But what is also true is that those people making less than $2 will never see the inside of a Starbucks.  They would have to save a year's salary to buy an S3.  So unless they're being transported by the Starship Enterprise into a Starbuck's false ceiling with an S3 and WiFi in hand it's not happening for them.

So back to us westerners who don't need transporter technology, $3/day after the next difficulty...

Well, I'm a senior, so just because we're on Social Security, doesn't mean it's appropriate to try to take advantage of us.  Believe it or not, we're human beings too!

Guys, the question is how much electricity can u steal? you risk your S3 which worth way more.

Point taken. But I don't think it's likely that those people are buying a lot of ASICs.

More than a third of the people on Earth make less than $2 per day, only counting wage-earners. In reality, it's probably significantly over half who earn less than $2/day. $4/day, then, is MASSIVE for most people, and well worth the risk.

Well they're guaranteed to have some hard candy, some loose change, a handkerchief and a whole bunch of keys in their pockets so I like to hold them upside down and shake them.  Those Werther's Original are too damn good to pass up.

Seriously it comes down to risk vs benefit.  What kind of trouble are you risking by blatantly stealing from a company and violating it's open access internet policy vs what you have to gain ($4/day as noted above and falling every 11 days).

bitcointalk.org

Really, there's good money in bullying seniors? I'll have to research that. Is there a forum on the topic?  

Great now we're resorting to the potential of theft.  Again it will be more profitable to bully seniors in a grocery store parking lot than it would be to sneak a miner into Starbucks.  If that things ever gets tracked back to you by serial number or fingerprints I can't imagine the number of crimes you could be charged with.

Well the really good ideas  I am leaving out  and believe me  there are more then one.

Interesting post. But the reality is much different.

Who is going to go through all that trouble and risk for (currently) $4 per day to hide an S3 in a Starbucks ceiling. Equally as ridiculous is a traveling businessman lugging an S3 in his suitcase so he can plug it in a hotel room. The TSA would be pretty curious about that strange machine in your luggage.

Of course it might be worthwhile if you were talking about an SP30. But trying to hide that in a place where it wouldn't immediately be heard would be virtually impossible.

Now the extension cord to the neighbor's house, I quite like that idea. Lol.

yes it will happen more and more.

the s-3 is good for this but the s-1 is also good.

People will do this I can see college students doing it.  Hey my neighbor is on vacation a lot during the summer.  Plugging in a 100 foot extension cord into his backyard outlet would be easy to do.  A businessman that use hotels  a lot hooking up an s-3 is a snap in a hotel room.  I would think the asicminer tube would be very nice to use in a hotel room.  send the coins to a paper wallet.

Before I type my little idea scenario here, I am not advocating the use of these ideas.  

For some reason I cannot stop thinking about what to do with all this leftover mining equipment when difficulty and electric cost make my S3 miners unprofitable. My imagination runs wild with ideas. I read on bitcointalk ideas for using miners as space heaters while obvious generating small amounts of bitcoin. What a great idea! Of course taking into account cost, electric efficiency, and heat output of a space heater and comparing it to a bitcoin miner. This again has me thinking.

We hear about “botnets” or these big malware viruses that can be downloaded on a victim’s computer and then start mining bitcoin for a perpetrator. One computer might not add up to a lot of bitcoin, but spread it out over 100,000 downloaders and I’m sure it starts becoming profitable. However, the same rule applies to these malware creators as it does miners. Difficulty will always raise making the operation less profitable as time goes on. Instead of stealing computer resources to mine bitcoin, crypto-crooks will have to move on to something else. Electricity.

Here’s a scenario I see happening in the future. S3 miners become no longer efficient because of electricity rates and difficulty. They drop in price and are very affordable. Crypto-crook “Steve” attaches a wifi antenna to his S3 board heads to the nearest Starbucks, or even a nice highway rest area. Steve slides a piece of the drop ceiling out of place in the bathroom, and taps into the electricity from the florescent light. He plugs in his S3 miner, and connects it to the free wifi. There you have it, Steve is now running a rig that is virtually untraceable if found, and will run until it IS found. Or until it burns down the building lol. Which is another thing we might see.

We see reports of people using workplace servers to mine bitcoin, and there is always chatter in the forums about moving into a college dorm with electric included and running a few miners. Imagine a tech guy at a small but busy doctor’s office throwing an S3 miner on the server rack. No one would question it unless a new tech guy got hired.

Do you guys think electricity theft or even just ‘scheming’ with included electricity is going to turn into a big thing once we hit our climax of ASIC hardware? I think we are going to see some clever and useful, but also dangerous and illegal activates start taking place.