The authorities of the Asian giant have confiscated around 7,000 crypto mining devices that were illegally consuming electricity, CCTV reported on December 22.
Tangshan police, the State Electric Power Department and other authorities reportedly conducted a joint operation in more than 70,000 homes, 3,061 merchants, 1,470 communities, factories, mines, courtyards and villages in the Kaiping district of Tangshan City in order to fight the illegal consumption of electricity.
During the investigation, which began back in April 2018, the authorities have seized nearly 7,000 cryptocurrency mining devices and 52 high-power transformers.
China is one of the leaders in the crypto mining industry due to the low price of electricity in the country. Miners use sophisticated mining devices (ASICs) that solve complex mathematical problems in order to obtain crypto rewards. This activity is unprofitable in most countries due to the high electricity consumption of these devices. However, Chinese miners take advantage of the low prices in the country to make money.
According to the authorities, they had detected that some houses had an electricity consumption 40 times higher than usual.
iHodl reported in September Inner Mongolian authorities had decided to limit cryptocurrency mining in their territory.
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