
Iceland police arrest suspected Bitcoin server thieves - edward
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43288495
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martinpw
> For the first time, it said, the energy required for coin mining had
> exceeded that used by Iceland's 340,000 inhabitants to power their homes.

That is a depressing statistic.

~~~
Sir_Substance
I suspect it's to some degree bollocks, but it's also potentially a testament
to the low electricity usage of Icelandic homes.

With the exception of the Westfjords, almost all Icelandic homes and
businesses are heated by geothermal hot water. There's such an excess of heat
that it's often pumped dozens of kilometers through pipes of varying
insulation quality and the heat loss over that distance is still more cost
efficient than electricity. They also keep the streets downtown ice-free year
round with the extra heat, and dump some of it into a beach behind the city to
keep it warm enough for swimming.

Anyway, Orka could be playing with their numbers in order to make sensational
statements. Tactically not mentioning the hot water, often the majority charge
on a residents bill, would make Icelandic houses some of the lowest energy
usage in the world. Pretty much everyone else uses electricity to run their
climate control devices and often to heat their home hot water, so no real
surprises there.

By contrast, some amount of air conditioners are required to cool data centers
even in Iceland. Factor that into your mining cost despite the fact that in a
data center doing other things it would be running anyway, and voila, there's
your difference. I doubt that much power is going through transistors.

~~~
jazoom
That's amazing. I wish we could pump coldness from vents in the ground to cool
down Queensland over the summer.

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jlgaddis
Am I understanding correctly that these guys apparently stole "more than 600"
servers (allegedly) _out of a data center!?_

At a minimum, I would expect the data center to have their own video
surveillance. In addition, it's not uncommon for folks to install their own
video cameras inside their own cages as well.

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gruez
>The AP newswire said police were now contacting internet service provider

>were

>now

which is it?

