A mining farm operated for several years in the building of a former store in the Bayandayevsky district of the Irkutsk region: a local resident placed cryptocurrency mining equipment there and connected it to the power grid, bypassing the meters.
What Law Enforcement Discovered
According to the police of the Irkutsk region, the illegal scheme operated from 2023 to 2025. In the premises of the former retail outlet, the man installed nine ASICs and organized the connection so that electricity did not pass through the meters.
The damage from such consumption was estimated at more than 1 million rubles. During the searches, the equipment was seized.
The court found the district resident guilty of causing property damage by deception or abuse of trust. He was fined 150 thousand rubles.
Why Such Farms Quickly Attract Attention
Mining requires stable and noticeable energy consumption. Even a small underground installation can place a significant load on the grid, especially if specialized equipment is used, not a regular central processing unit or graphics processing unit.
'ASICs' are devices based on an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. They are used for proof-of-work algorithms, where the equipment solves computational tasks and receives cryptocurrency rewards.
How a Mining Farm Works and What Income Depends On
A mining farm is a set of devices for cryptocurrency mining: ASICs or GPUs, power supplies, cooling, internet, and a room with reliable electrical wiring and ventilation. The equipment connects to the blockchain network, participates in transaction confirmation and the creation of new blocks, and income consists of rewards for a found block and transaction fees.
How much a farm earns per month depends on the cryptocurrency price, network difficulty, equipment power, and the cost of electricity. The payback period is calculated using the same logic: the cost of equipment and setup is divided by the net monthly profit, i.e., income after expenses for electricity, maintenance, and premises.
Consumption is calculated based on device power: kWh per month = farm power in kW × 24 × 30. The more ASICs or graphics cards running simultaneously, the higher the load on the network, making a separate electrical line, cooling, and ventilation even more important.
Farms vary: ASIC farms use specialized devices for specific algorithms, GPU farms are assembled from graphics cards, and cloud mining provides access to others' computing power without installing equipment oneself.
At launch, expenses consist of purchasing ASICs or GPUs, power supplies, cooling, preparing electrical wiring, premises, and maintenance. Home mining is technically possible but is limited by noise, heat, load on wiring, and tariffs. In Russia, objections usually arise not from cryptocurrency mining itself, but from illegal connections, meter bypassing, and damage to power grids.
In 2024, 2025, and 2026, mining profitability depends on coin prices, network difficulty, electricity cost, equipment maintenance, and connection requirements.
Context: Equipment and Algorithms
In the crypto industry, such devices are primarily associated with mining coins where power and energy efficiency are important.
- Algorithms: SHA-2 in Bitcoin, Scrypt in Litecoin and Dogecoin.
- Equipment manufacturers: Bitmain.
In Russia, illegal connections of mining installations regularly become subjects of inspections: the main objection in such cases is not related to the technology itself, but to unaccounted electricity consumption and damage to grid organizations.
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