Bitcoin mining can be a terrifying nightmare in Venezuela

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Today I wanted to share with you this pretty interesting article that I found in Hackernoon, a particular section dedicated to computing science and technology part of the Medium web page:

https://hackernoon.com/extortion-police-raids-and-secrecy-inside-the-venezuelan-bitcoin-mining-world-6e97a25e7402

I think this is a great supplement to the last two articles I already posted here:
https://steemit.com/vincentb/@johanalejo/what-s-up-with-this-venezuelan-cryptocurrency-el-petro
https://steemit.com/vincentb/@johanalejo/my-crypto-experience-so-far-investing-instead-of-trading

In this articles I mentioned that as part of my investments in crypto, I am thinking about mining as a future option (I still don't have enough money to actually buy an antminer but anyway...) and also that the venezuelan goverment has created a national miners registry as a part of it's campaign to embrace the use of cryptocurrencies and to create their very own coin, the Petro.

This registry is conceived to "give permissions" to actually mine not only the Petro (still not 100% clear if it will be a mineable crytpcurrency) but any other coin, and supposedly to give you access to the so called ICO to buy some of the first Petros to be issued.

So at this point, you must be thinking that as bad as this "permissions" sound to anybody who sees cryptocurrencies as the most powerfull tool to accomplish financial and economic freedom from banks and institutions, at least this country is legalizing mining and that puts us ahead of most of the nations of the world.

However you should know that at the present there is no law, normative or whatever that prohibits or limits in anyway (besides the electric comsumption's limitations that must be respected in residential areas) the mining activies.

So what's the problem? In the last couple of years it has been public news that some miners have been detained and their machines have been seized by authorities, charging them with "electricity theft", "foreign exchange fraud" and even "terrorism financing".

Again, having no laws against mining whatsoever that is.

But not every case of mining rigs discovered by government agents has ended this way. In some cases, this "law enforcement" agents simply ended up asking for money on regular basis (here we call that a "vaccine"). Or they could seize some of the machines, forcing the owner to set them up so this "agents" can mine themselves in exchange for letting him/her keep the rest of the rigs, or they could simply seize every machine in exchange for nothing (with a good beating just as a little extra).

The rumour is that many of this machines end up mining inside government owned facilities, so even electricity and air conditioning end up being 100% free for this people.

So, what you think about this socalled "cryto paradise" that Venezuela has become?

I would like to read what you think about all of this

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