Men were arrested after stealing 2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in northern China, but why did the criminals need so much power?

The answer is in the phenomenon that has captured the attention of everyone from Wall Street to Main Street: Bitcoin.

What exactly is Bitcoin? According to Investopedia, Bitcoin is a digital currency that was created in January 2009 by the highly mysterious "Satoshi Nakamoto" and operates using incredible am Bitcoin offers the promise of lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and, unlike government-issued currencies, it is operated by a decentralized authority.

Bitcoin essentially uses digital blockchains to create definitive value for digital transactions, creating a decentralized banking system that shares value to all users without a central third party to oversee the transaction.

The video filmed in Xianyang City shows us the inside of a Bitcoin mining factory, using more than 1,000 bitcoin mining machines. When the police arrived at the scene, the building was empty with nobody. The whole room was still hot and there was a large 630-volt transformer still in operation. Each mining machine had a power rating between 1600 volts and 1800 volts.

These types of highly powerful machines extract the Bitcoin via a process that adds to the blockchain, thus "mining" more Bitcoin from the algorithm established on the network of machines that produce the digital currency.

The more powerful the machine, the more Bitcoin can be added to the blockchain. In its early days, Bitcoin was only worth about 8 US cents, but with Bitcoin trading at approximately $50,000 per coin on average as of May 2021, the financial incentive to mine the coin is astronomically higher.

It’s reported that a group of people rent this dissected warehouse and turned it into a Bitcoin mining factory. They hired professional technical personnel for mining Bitcoins. In order to maximize profits, they illegally connected their factory to the high-voltage grid steal altogether 2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity for their mining. The men were arrested at the end.

The video was filmed on Feb 15, 2019, and provided by local media.

Men were arrested after stealing 2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity for mining Bitcoin in northern China.