HomeCryptoBitcoinRussian church mines bitcoin illegally

Russian church mines bitcoin illegally

A Russian church is now having to pay a hefty fine because it mined bitcoins without authorization and without declaring it.

The Russian utility company provides that for the consumption of large amounts of electricity used, mining in this case, you have to pay a surcharge on the energy tariff, which is higher than the average.

If it is not declared, a fine will be paid as a penalty.

And so, in the city of Irkutsk in Russia, the Evangelical Church was discovered to deal with unauthorized mining activities, receiving a fine of one million rubles ($15,000).

According to Today magazine, the local authorities found large quantities of computer equipment dedicated to bitcoin mining activities in the building rented by the church.  

Given the lack of authorisation for this type of activity and therefore the non-payment of the surcharge for the electricity tariff, the church received a fine.

The religious authority tried in vain to dismiss the accusation, contesting it directly in court. According to the local church, the increase in energy consumption was due to the work of the central heating system, as well as the work of the equipment in the press office.

It was Irkutskenergo, a local utilities company, that detected the excessive energy consumption of the church’s building since it had negative repercussions on the local neighbourhood.

In general, in the world of mining, electricity is a fixed cost of fundamental importance. For this reason, it is possible to find municipalities in which public service companies (the operators, for instance), in order to attract cryptocurrency miners, offer lower than average rates. Many others, however, prefer to protect the community by putting special surcharge barriers for this activity.

Stefania Stimolo
Stefania Stimolo
Laureata in Marketing e Comunicazione, Stefania è un’esploratrice di opportunità innovative. Partendo come Sales Assistant per e-commerce, nel 2016 inizia ad appassionarsi al mondo digitale autonomamente, inizialmente in ambito Network Marketing dove conosce e si appassiona dell’ideale di Bitcoin e tecnologia Blockchain diventandone una divulgatrice come copywriter e traduttrice per progetti ICO e blog, ed organizzando corsi conoscitivi.
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