BBC publishes Bitcoin mining investigation in Venezuela

The English media is entering the world of miners in the Caribbean country and reveals the huge profits, but also the problems they face.

"This is how the clandestine mining club of bitcoins in Venezuela operates" is the title of a research report of the BBC of London, which was reproduced yesterday by the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional. In the work reveals how the underworld of operations for the digital currency mining in that country "in a semi-legal environment, only limited by the cost of hardware and power cuts."

The story tells the story of Eleazar (false name to protect his identity). The BBC journalist manages to enter his mining center located in a room in a middle-class apartment in Maracaibo, west of Venezuela. The journalist describes:

The case of a CPU (the hardware of a computer) rests dismembered in front of him, on a desk of brown streaks. The computer, on, is the basis of an architecture of gray plastic tubes, of medium size. Two professional video cards are attached to them with stickers. Their microventilators work to give. "Han Solo" glances at his monitor. Lines on lines of yellow, purple and gray texts follow each ten seconds. It details the categories: "total shares"; "Rejected"; "Time". Operations do not stop. They have hours after hours being processed. Even days. They are pulsations of an office proscribed in this nation of the Caribbean tropic, whose economy is governed by an iron control of change since 2003 ".

He explains that this is one of the many miners in Venezuela, who comments:

This is like the Cosa Nostra. In Venezuela we operate in the shadows. "

Other cases, such as that of "Mister Bitcoin", "nickname of a" miner "of the Venezuelan West, were found in the report, who came across the occupation thanks to his nucleus of friends." It states:

It is a lie that we make money without doing anything. We must study the market. We must watch the news. You have to know what you are going to invest. It demands attention and dedication. "

He says he is very well financially, but few people know the source of his money.

According to the BBC, "miners in Venezuela are generally young entrepreneurs, mostly males, familiar with the world of technology and members of the middle class or wealthy. They apply identity verification filters to whoever wants to join their WhatsApp or Telegram groups. They do not want infiltrations. They are geek-neck agents. "

The English media notes that there are miners in the main Venezuelan cities and they act "under the noses of the local police ... they install expensive equipment of sound and electrical control to mine digital coins".

They know each other, work secretly as a kind of sect, as is clear from the article. One of the miners declares:

We have to stay in hiding. The less we know, the safer we will be. "

One of the difficulties is the acquisition of the mining equipment, which can cost between 3500 and 4000 dollars, an amount almost impossible to obtain in Venezuela. The other problem is the lack of regulation and the kind of "bipolarity" with which the government deals with the issue. Write the BBC:

The leftist government of Nicolás Maduro approaches the mining of criptomoneda from the duality. First, it expressed its allergy to bitcoin since last year with arrests and seizures of equipment on massive mining farms. But a few days ago, the Minister of Agriculture, Wilmar Castro Soteldo, surrendered to digital coins. They are a weapon of sovereignty, a safe alternative, he said. "

He adds that another problem is the power outages that greatly affect mining.

Source: BBC Feature Reported by El Nacional