NEW CONTROVERSY OCCUR OVER MINING BITCOIN IN SOUTH KOREA DUE TO ENERGY TAPPING
credit to cointelegraph
Earlier this week, Yongsan Electronics Market, an iconic center in South Korea which houses some of the largest electronic retailers and South Korean headquarters of major computer manufacturers including ASUS, officially banned Bitcoin mining after discovering that some of its smaller stores have used Yongsan Electronics Market’s electricity to mine Bitcoin.
Local sources including Hankyung revealed that some stores established mining equipment to mine Bitcoin with the market’s electricity. Employees of certain computer retail stores even had normal CPUs running overnight mining Bitcoin.
Owners of computer stores and electronics retailers submitted formal complaints to the Yongsan Electronics Market management and expressed their concerns over overheating computers posing as a potential fire hazard.
In fact, in early 2013, many cryptocurrency enthusiasts in South Korea tried to mine Litecoin, which had significantly lower difficulty levels than Bitcoin, with normal CPUs or computers. After days of running Litecoin mining software, some reported that the motherboards of their laptops melted due to extreme overheating.
In a public statement, the Yongsan Electronics Market announced:
“Running of Bitcoin mining equipment results to significant consumption of electricity within the center. If electric consumption reaches its limit, electricity costs will drastically increase and they will have to be covered by merchants, computer stores and electronic retailers within the center. Some merchants and stores submitted formal complaints that due the rapid increase in electricity consumption caused by Bitcoin mining, air conditioners stopped functioning properly.”
!cheetah ban