Venezuela closes Bitcoin mining farm after long regulatory uncertainty
The Venezuelan government seized more than 2,300 Bitcoin ASIC miners on Thursday, May 16, all within the framework of investigations into the multi-billion-dollar PDVSA-Cripto government corruption scheme.
According to local press reports citing military sources, members of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) and the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), along with officials from the Venezuelan Public Ministry; They raided the mining farm that operated in the El Viñedo Industrial ZoneGirardot municipality of the city of Maracay, Aragua state, in the interior of the country.
Total, 2,304 ASIC devices were located to mine Bitcoin, model S19J Pro from the Chinese manufacturer Bitmain. This device is available for around USD 1,900 in online stores such as Amazon.com. As indicated, the miners disconnected and remained as a warehouse within the warehouse in which they operated.
CriptoNoticias sources confirmed that the Venezuelan State intervened in the mining farm in Maracay. “The raid was in an area they had never touched,” miners said on condition of anonymity.
At the same time as the raid on the Bitcoin mining farm in Maracay, right next door, in the state of Carabobo, the governor of the entity, Rafael Lacava, urged users to “reduce the consumption of the Bitcoin mining farms that “They suck up a few megawatts and then generate the issue of electrical rationing.”
“We are restricting the irresponsible consumption of cryptocurrency farms,” Lacava said in a video posted on his official Instagram account, in which he appeared alongside Venezuelan Electric Energy Minister Jorge Márquez.
The procedure carried out on Thursday afternoon is directly related to the anti-corruption operation initiated by the government of Nicolás Maduro in March, which led to the arrest of the former Minister of Petroleum and former president of Petróleos de Venezuela SA (Pdvsa), Tareck El Aissami, one of the alleged ringleaders of the PDVSA-Cripto scheme.
According to investigations, El Aissami, along with others, allegedly participated in a plot which cost the national treasury the loss of up to USD 16,000 million.
They allegedly sold oil illegally and converted the profits into cryptocurrencies. The alleged perpetrators are also said to have set up Bitcoin mining farms with the illicitly obtained money, according to Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab.
The raid on the Bitcoin mining farm in Maracay occurs in a context in which the activity as such is partially paralyzed in Venezuela as a result of the intervention of the National Superintendency of Cryptoactives and Related Activities (Sunacrip), which has already been in place for more than one year.
