British police have discovered signs of a hemp farm: heavy use of electricity, lots of cables and vents. There, however, he discovered another illegal process: a cryptocurrency “miner” that was stealing electricity from the national grid.

A West Midlands police raid exposed the operation in an industrial area northwest of Birmingham, the second largest city in the United Kingdom.

“This is definitely not what we expected,” Sgt. Jennifer Griffin said on Friday. “He had everything to grow cannabis and I think he was the second cryptocurrency mine of this type to be found in the West Midlands,” he added.

Police believed that this facility was undermining Bitcoinshe added.

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin They operate thanks to a decentralized system: Autonomous computer networks verify transactions all over the world.

Participants, or “miners,” use powerful manipulations to automatically generate complex equations that explain their participation BitcoinsAn activity that consumes a lot of energy.

The police said in a statement that “many people were visiting the site, and there were many cables and visible ports, and a drone discovered a large heat source.”

Griffin explained: “As far as I know, mining digital currencies is not illegal in and of itself, but stealing electricity is illegal,” noting that there were no arrests because the place was empty.

Converting electricity into Bitcoins It could be a very lucrative business: In the last year, Bitcoin It gained nearly 400% and sold nearly $ 37,000 on Friday.

But its heavy consumption of electricity means that “mining”, as the manufacturing process is known, is not widespread in Europe.

Its environmental footprint also prompted Tesla founder Elon Musk to refuse payments in this cryptocurrency to his electric cars.

According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), miners Bitcoins They consume about 114 terawatts (two terawatts, or trillion watts), or 0.5% of the world’s electricity production. (I)