Topic: The Secret, Dangerous World of Venezuelan Bitcoin Mining (Read 919 times)

I expect he has the miners distributed across many sites to disguise the electricity use. According to that article he is taking huge precautions - living in a poor neighbourhood that doesn't get raided, wearing old clothes, keeping a low profile. It also said he had about a dozen relatives he is supporting, and I guess in return he is getting them to keep the miners on their premises.

If he manages to do that his electric bill would be enormous. And not in terms of usd but of KW.
With the government unable to provide 24/7 service I doubt he would be left alone mining with that kind of gear.

In maximum a month police would be at his door.

Alberto, meanwhile, based on his own account, is earning more than $1,200 a day mining bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

Four years ago, Alberto's career prospects were bleak. The 23-year-old Venezuelan had just graduated from college with a degree in computer science, but his nation's economy was already shredded by 13 years of socialism.

"There were job opportunities, but they paid like $20 a month, and we were used to traveling and buying things from abroad so we couldn't settle for that," his friend Luis recalls. Alberto and Luis—whose names have been changed for their own safety—teamed up to start a clothing business, but the venture floundered.

Then Alberto discovered bitcoin mining.

He read about it on an Argentinian gaming forum. An item posted to the site described a process of getting paid in a new internet-based currency denominated in strings of numbers and letters, in exchange for running computations on a home computer. His parents said that the whole thing sounded like a Ponzi scheme. Alberto, however, sensed that his life was about to change.

Four years later, his country is embroiled in a humanitarian crisis. The supermarket shelves are bare. Children are fainting from hunger in their classrooms. A mob recently broke into the Caracas zoo to eat a horse. Many Venezuelans subsist on a monthly government stipend equivalent to about $9.

Alberto, meanwhile, based on his own account, is earning more than $1,200 a day mining bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

...Bitcoin miners may have unique access to foreign goods, but they also live under constant threat. Many fear they'll be discovered by the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (sebin), the country's secret police force. SEBIN officers hunt for bitcoin miners and then extort them under the threat of arrest and criminal prosecution.