From the destruction of the environment to making the search for an alien life more difficult, the extraction of cryptocurrency is responsible for many problems. But the slowing down of clocks may seem excessive. Something strange is happening in Central Europe right now: clocks work slowly, and not for fractions of a second, but whole minutes. Could it be the fault of the cryptocurrencies or is it just an excuse?
Cryptocurrency and anomalies in clocks
Since mid-January, the continental European energy system has suffered anomalies. This huge belt of 25 countries, from Spain to Turkey and from Poland to the Netherlands, has been the subject of “a frequency deviation of the continuous system from the average value of 50 Hz” reports the European Network of Transmission System Operators of Electricity (ENTSO- E). The problem has been identified between Kosovo and Serbia, but the cause is not.
Cryptocurrency and energy
The power deviations that influenced the electrical frequencies had the strange knock-on effect of delaying clocks that calculate their time based on the frequency of the power system. As a result, they work with “a delay of almost six minutes”.
It is not clear exactly how this slowdown occurs, at what time and if these clocks can be manually adjusted to show the correct time. What is clear is that the drainage current responsible for this anomaly is enormous: 113 GWh, which is equivalent to the energy consumption of Greenland for six months. Heating timers and oven clocks are among the affected systems.
ENTSO-E is clearly displeased with the lack of power and its strange side effects. It is literally powerless to act. The situation, he acknowledges, is largely a political issue that would require the cooperation of countries suspected of causing the enormous drainage of energy. On the Swiss Grid website, the current 50 Hz deviation can be viewed in real time.
At the time of publication it was at 49.970 Hz, causing a time deviation of the grid of 345 seconds. The site explains: “There are still many clocks ranging from frequency in the power grid. If the frequency is higher, they go faster. If the frequency is lower, they go slower “.
The miners of cryptocurrency among the guilties
The problem of what could be the siphoning of electricity on such a large scale remains unresolved. It could be a top secret project involving a particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider. It could be impropriety or incompetence of the government.
Or it could be the crypto miners’ fault. The suspects are falling on this last option. Electricity tariffs in Serbia and Kosovo are among the cheapest in Europe, with the price of extracting a bitcoin in these regions estimated at $ 3,133, placing them on par with China.
“The first step [to solve problems] is to stop the deviation”, writes ENTSO-E. “The second step is to compensate for the missing amount of energy.” Crypto miners could still be exempt from all charges. But until the culprit can be identified, a massive rogue mining operation remains a strong possibility.
