HIT & RUN BLOG Four Bitcoin Miners Arrested in Venezuela Three men and one woman were charged with "electricity theft" and "internet fraud."Federal police in Venezuela today arrested four bitcoin miners in the town of Charallave.Three men and one women were accused of "electricity theft" and "internet fraud."The news, which was reported earlier today by Venezuela's leading bitcoin news site, CriptoNoticias, was first announced on the Instagram feed of Douglas Rico, who's the director of the Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas Penales y Criminalisticas (CICPC), a federal police agency.The arrested miners were identified as Néstor Rafael Amundaray Precilla (57), Ana Cecilia Farias Villanueva (25), Kevin David Ojeda Díaz (26), and Alberto José Zapata Orta (23).In a statement attached to his Instagram post, Rico said that they were running "more than 300" bitcoin mining computers and selling them in Cúcuta, a Colombian town near the Venezuelan border, which is known as a place where Venezuelans go to freely trade bolivars and dollars without abiding by the government's strict currency controls.

Rico also claimed that the miners' actions had affected "the consumption and the stability" of electricity service in Charallave.These four individuals aren't the first Venezuelans bitcoin miners to be arrested.In 2015, José Perales, 46, and Joel Padrón, 31, were arrested by the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (SEBIN), which is the country's secret police force, and held for three and a half months.As I argued in a January 2017 feature story, bitcoin mining is turning Venezuelan "socialism against itself:" [T]he main factor driving Venezuelans to take up bitcoin mining is a price control put in place by the socialist government: Electricity is virtually free.Bitcoin mining requires a lot of computer processing power, which in turn requires a lot of electricity.In most of the world, utility bills eat into the cost of mining.In places where energy prices are high, it can even be a losing proposition.But in Venezuela, the government has turned bitcoin mining into something akin to owning a home mint.

Price controls, of course, invariably lead to shortages, and the country's frequent electricity outages create constant headaches for bitcoin miners.But they've also come up with workarounds, such as locating their operations in industrial zones, where electricity service is generally uninterrupted.Since bitcoin mining is a process, in effect, of converting the value of electricity into currency, Venezuelan miners are engaging in a form of arbitrage: They're buying an underpriced commodity and turning it into bitcoin to make a profit.bitcoin chart excelThe miners have turned socialism against itself.litecoin wallet with minerRead the whole thing.paris bitcoin startupVIEW HIT & RUN ARCHIVES GET REASON MAGAZINE Get Reason's print or digital edition before it’s posted online "One sane voice fighting tons of nonsense."bitcoin et banque de france

Venezuelan police have arrested eight bitcoin miners in the last two week, and the country's leading bitcoin exchange announced yesterday that it's suspending operations because its bank account was revoked.The recent spate of incidents is causing members of the country's bitcoin community to take new measures to conceal their activities.Yesterday the Policía Nacional Bolivariana (PNB) announced that two men identified as Adan Erick Tapia Salas, 37, and Edwald Antonio Tapia Salas, 31, were arrested in Caracas.ethereum wallet downloadPNB officers caught the two men through the online marketplace MercadoLibre, where they were attempting to sell bitcoin mining equipment.buy bitcoin edmontonBitcoin mining and the buying and selling of computer equipment isn't illegal in Venezuela, and it's not clear if the authorities have filed formal charges in the case.bitcoin value bloomberg

In a separate incident, the PNB raided a warehouse in the city of Valencia last Friday with 11,000 bitcoin mining computers.They arrested Eusebio Gómez Henríquez, 51, and Andrés Alejandro Carrero Martínez, 35, who were accused of cybercrime, financing terrorism, stealing electricity, and exchange fraud.An official statement linked the two men to a criminal network operating from Poland.As the Venezuelan bitcoin news site CriptoNoticias reports, apparently the basis for this claim is that many of the discovered mining computers were purchased from a Polish seller, who advertised them through the online forum BitcoinTalk in August of 2015.bitcoin calculator inrOne of the arrested miners, Andrés Carrero, attended Miami Dade College and worked on and off in commercial real estate sales in the Miami area for over a decade before "disappearing about a year ago," according to the leasing manager at his former company.bitcoin calculator inr

Carrero also ran a company called North American Merchant Services headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, which offered foreigners the opportunity to set up mining computers in his operations center in exchange for a revenue split.In yet another incident, agents from the Cuerpo de Investigaciones Científicas Penales y Criminalisticas (CICPC) arrested four bitcoin miners in the town of Charallave on January 25.The discovery of the massive mining facility in Valencia is causing a backlash that's making it harder for Venezuelans to exchange bitcoins for local currency.SurBitcoin, the country's leading exchange, announced yesterday that its bank account was being revoked and that users should withdraw their money from the service immediately to avoid losing funds.The company says it expects to be operating again in "approximately two weeks."In the meantime, it encouraged customers to use the peer-to-peer trading site LocalBitcoins.Rodrigo Souza, the founder and CEO of the company that runs SurBitcoin's exchange platform, attributed the temporary closure to the recent arrests in Valencia.

"When it was found that there were 11,000 mining computers consuming the energy to power a whole town at a time when there are severe electricity shortages, it triggered a reaction," he said."We were not contacted by the government, but our bank is revoking our account because it doesn't want to be involved.We are currently reaching out to other banking partners."Prior to January 25, Venezuela's only known bitcoin-related arrests occurred in March of 2016, when three men were detained in separate incidents by the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional (SEBIN).(They've all since been released.)With the recent incidents, there are now three separate law enforcement agencies that have arrested bitcoin miners in Venezuela.Bitcoin is proving to be a potentially life-saving technology in a country experiencing severe shortages of food and medicine.Many Venezuelans are using the internet-based currency to circumvent the country's currency countrols and import essential goods, including groceries and pharmaceuticals.