A Malta-based crypto miner sues mining hardware company in a first of its kind case and wins against the company in the court.
Crypto-mining isn’t that difficult. With the proper miner that’s both energy-efficient and works fast to crack those math problem shells open for the user to get a hold of their reward- the block.
That is how the proof-of-work algorithm works: You get mathematical problems. Your mining gear aka the application s[pecific integrated circuit (ASIC) works on it and come up with a solution. You are then rewarded with a block on the blockchain.
On a side note- blockchains do have difficulty levels that make it difficult for some miners to mine solve some specific problems. But that isn’t a big enough factor that was at play here. The difficulty is for stalling- buying some time because blocks need to be created with a ten (10) minute interval.
Not everything goes as planned, and one such case just happens to have been what a resident from Malta experienced.
Malta Today reports that a man, whose name shall not be disclosed for obvious privacy reasons here, brought a miner from 3 Group, a local IT firm.
Now ASICS are supposed to be power-hungry, but this one has been chewing on more power than the output it would give. The power consumption outweighed the earnings of the miner, and hence, the case was taken to Malta’s Consumer Claims Tribunal.
The miner costs two thousand euros (€2,240). The power cost that the user had to pay for was two thousand six hundred euros (€2,600) – lose/lose situation.
The CEO of 3 Group, Dario Azzopardi, did not protest to the claim when the man asked for reimbursement. The Tribunal asked for Dario Azopardi in the hearing against his company’s product to which he never showed up. Furthermore, the right to ownership stayed with the man who had bought the miner.
Bitcoin has recently been on the high end with seventy-one exahash (7.43EH/s) of it being mined at one instance. This surge from sixty-four exahash (64.49EH/s) contributes to ten (10.78%) increase in the mining rate since mid-July.
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