It seems Bitmains legal woes will never end. The world’s largest cryptocurrency mining operator recently sued an unnamed hacker for the theft of $5.5 million worth of crypto from its Binance account.
Now the company itself is on the receiving end of a lawsuit from a Californian resident who claims the company has been illegally utilizing customers electricity to mine cryptocurrency.
The accuser, Gor Gevorkyan, pointed out that company recently changed the way in which its ASIC mining devices operate. The new devices, he claims, automatically start in “full power mode” and can take several hours or even days to set up, during which time the full power mode is providing mining power to Bitmain’s own account.
“Bitmain’s ASIC devices are preconfigured to use its customers’ electricity to generate cryptocurrency for the benefit of Bitmain rather that its customer”, he said.
Gevorkyan notes that previous devices would boot in low power mode until the setup process is completed, at which time customers can configure their own accounts on them and start mining. Not only do new devices use full power mode but come preconfigured with a “default” Bitmain account.
Bitmain has recently completed an IPO and is in the process of listing its company on the Hong Kong stock exchange. These new allegations could present hurdles for cryptos biggest mining corporation as they move forward.
Cryptocurrency mining has recently become largely unprofitable in the wake of falling prices, with Chinese mining group F2Pool reporting as many as 600,000 miners having to shut down recently.
