Cryptominers made $100k from mining at an Airbnb for three weeks | Hacker News Reader

Cryptominers made $100k from mining at an Airbnb for three weeks

tomshardware.com

33 pointsvasco38 comments

This story is unbelievable. The power costs versus profit make no sense, and if you had 10 magical supercomputers that could mine $100,000 of crypto against a $1,500 power investment, you surely wouldn't waste your time moving them around - or get the proper cooling setup in a random Airbnb, over and over.

This. The numbers just don't add up in order for this to make any sense.

$100 is plausible though, and if you had some outdated mining hardware (still likely to be single use ASIC hashing setups rather than computers) along with a lack of morals/ethics, then I can see it happening for sure.

Not really. Maybe not $100k, but there is definitely a good profit range here. You can buy Asics today that give you 3 to 4 Dollars per kWh (not BTC obviously since that is way less profitable). If you assume that the price of electricity was average for the US (~15c/kWh), a $1500 monthly bill means roughly 10,000kWh. That would be 30k-40k Dollars in crypto. Even more if they were early.

The problem is that these Asics make Nvidia enterprise card prices look reasonable. So only super cash loaded people can profit from that right now.

This smells a bit fishy. If you make $100.000 from mining for 3 weeks with $1.500 in power, then the power costs are almost insignificant.

With about 500 hours in those 3 weeks, every hour you don't mine is $200, so if unhooking and restarting your mining equipment takes 4 hours one way, you've lost money after moving it back and forth.

Assuming the story is true (unlikely) - they could have been mining an easy to mine, low value crypto currency which since then increased in price a lot.

But even then (again unlikely) they did not mine $100k worth of crypto currency, but instead bought a winning lottery ticket/speculated/etc.

Cryptocurrency "mining" is a lottery. The "miner" that guesses the correct number is paid a reward. There isn't much more to it.

They could also have gotten ridiculously lucky and solved a block with a small mining pool.

Whatever it was, they would have made money regardless of power costs.

I mean, nobody would just go on the Internet and tell lies and all, and the story's only coming out now, but crypto's been on a wild. If they mined and sold ETH at the peak in 2021 when it was above $4,500, that's 23 Eth they would have had to have mined to hit $100,000k. Someone else will have to do the math on how achievable that was in difficulty, but I don't think it's that inconceivable.

Because the author thought "I stole $1500 of electricity from my AirBnB host" would not generate enough view for them.

The point is that if you could make $100k from $1.5k in power then it makes no sense to not do it in a data center where you don't have to move the computers around and break them.

If they'd make $1,000 I'd believe it.

if your projection was for making $1,000, but then because spiked up to over $4,500 an ETH, that it's suddenly lucrative, it makes sense. cryptocurrency's been on a wild ride so a projection that they'd only make $1,000, but ended up with $100,000, isn't impossible.

It isn't impossible, but wildly unlikely.

They made over $100k but they waste time renting and moving AirBNBs (which forces them to take their miners offline) to save $1.5k in electricity?

This is the first thing that comes to my mind. Even if my bill is $50k - I do it at home (assuming $100k is how much I get in the end). Something just doesn't add up in this article.

Nobody sane would move their optimized mining operation constantly across various AirBnBs. It is hard to setup, very noisy, generates a ton of heat which, without proper cooling, does not make any money.

Can you really still make $100k in 3 weeks with just 10 computers? Why isn't everyone doing that? I thought you needed insane computational resources to make meaningful revenue on bitcoin anymore.

It also says they only spent $1,500 worth of electricity. It makes me suspect it’s not accurate.

> “It was cheaper for them to rent a house to pay for that electricity.”

I had a similar thought.

1) Unforeseen: When they checked-in they didn't know 'for sure' that they will make that $100k, otherwise they would do it at home and avoid the pain.

2) Showing off: How does she know for a fact that 'they made $100k'? Perhaps they wanted to show off by saying something stupid like 'hey we made $100k in a week so we don't care about the $1.5k', in which case, is anyone from the IRS reading this?

3) IRS: Someone who is stupid/shady enough to do this, is not 100% legit on all their 'business practices'

In many countries no one pays taxes for crypto mining/trading. They might be foreigners, or the money might be held as crypto overseas.

(Agreed with the other points though)

> in which case, is anyone from the IRS reading this?

The IRS doesn't care if you lie to random strangers about how much money you have.

But in the off chance these guys actually made 100k in a week by renting AirBnBs and moving desktops/servers/rigs then they might as well try to fly under the radar...

If I was the IRS and wanted to find out crypto miners I would (among other controls) ask energy companies that provide electricity to retail (flats/homes/etc) to give me the outliers/extreme-right-of-the-bell-curve. It doesn't make sense that someone living in a studio of 30sqm to have a £500 monthly electricity bill unjustifiably.

They could have just been gaming, charging the cars for trips, having a good time using the electricity. How would she even know what they’re doing? They probably told her that to make her bug off.

That seems like the most likely case. Hauling PCs sounds like a LAN party mixed with a holiday. Would she really believe the crap they fed her about the crypto mining?

Even if for some miraculous reason they did make that much money, there would be no incentive to tell her unless they'd also pay her electric bill just to get rid of any unwanted attention.

Just add a clause limiting the free electricity to a sensible amount, and charge at-cost for anything over. I rented a cottage (not via AirBnB) for a week and paid for my 11 kWh of use over that time at the end. Of course, these professional hosts don't actually want to meet their guests…

I'd be surprised if the AirBnB host was able to work out that they made $100k , unless the guests told her (and were telling the truth) which seems unlikely.

Feels like you'd need to know what coin they were mining and what the equipment actually was (e.g. what type of mining rig) to have a chance at working out revenue.

EDIT - Looking at this https://www.asicminervalue.com/ makes it even less likely that they could have made $100k in a week...

When did this happen though? If it was back in, say, 2021 before ETH switched over, it's less implausible.

Perhaps they weren't trying to steal electricity but rather avoid consuming all those kWh in the same location. If an electric company sees a similar energy consumption at a property over a considerable period, they will report it because it could be a drug plantation or an illegal mining farm (Europe). Using AirBnBs and changing locations every 15 or 30 days seems to be a solution to that problem.

If you watch that video embedded in the article you'll see the presenter doing some additional activities while talking. This is a technique often used to "bring the viewer along" by having the presenter doing everyday activities like working in a kitchen, getting ready to go out, etc. It increases engagement and once you notice it, you notice it frequently.

Also seems like a great way to happen to show products you have been sent, although you are absolutely not a breathing billboard…

I wonder what happens if you try this at a hotel?

You'll trip the breaker and get a visit from maintenance. Do it a few times and you'll get booted or just have to spend the rest of your stay in a room with a tripped breaker.

In purpose built hotels each room is separately fused. I don't know what the price of electricity was but if we assume 0.10 USD per kWh then 1.5 kUSD is 15 000 kWh, roughly 30 kW continuous for three weeks. It would not surprise me if that would trip a hotel room breaker.

In the US with 120 V domestic circuits it corresponds to roughly 250 A so would need to be distributed over multiple 120 V circuits anyway. US 120 V circuits are typically 15 A (as far as I can tell from a quick web search) so you would need to connect about 16 of them.

It all sounds most unlikely.

I've done a bit of mining at home in the past, I dont beileve this article.

seems more like its just an excuse to tell EV owners they're not welcome.

You might be right, but $1,500 of electricity into a Tesla over the weeks? that's a ton of driving. like 55k miles worth of driving at 10 cents/kwh. at 100mph that's 22 days worth of driving

This is big risk for Marriott and Hiltons unless they do something about it, they will lose valuable clientele to Airbnb.

This probably happens often. The incentives and number of people involved just align well for mining to happen at Airbnb's on the regular.

It's unlikely that any AirBNB has enough power and cooling to make any meaningful amount of money mining there.

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