A class-action lawsuit for over $5 million has been filed in northern California against Chinese mining giant Bitmain. The company is being accused of utilizing customers’ newly purchased machines to mine cryptocurrency at full power for its own benefit while customers were configuring their equipment.
Official court documents read:
“In the past, Bitmain ASIC devices could be configured and initialized in low-power mode that did not mine cryptocurrency for Bitmain. However, after Bitmain established itself as one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency miners in the last several years, defendant redesigned its ASIC devices to mine cryptocurrency for the benefit of itself rather than its customers who purchase the products. Conveniently, Bitmain cashes in on every second it takes to get the ASIC configured with the customers’ specifications and lays the substantial costs of operating the ASIC devices at the feet of its customers.”
The legal documents state that, up until two years ago, the company’s mining equipment was always set to begin operations in low-power mode, and no default account was ever set to receive extracted coins. This situation seems to have changed.
Among the suit’s plaintiffs is Gor Gevorkyan of Los Angeles, California. The court filing states that Gevorkyan purchased Bitmain ASIC devices, including the AntMiner S9, to mine cryptocurrency in January 2018. The document says that the device was extremely difficult to configure, and thus the process required a “substantial amount of time.” During this period, the devices purchased were pre-configured to mine virtual currency for Bitmain’s benefit.
In addition, the filing claims the device operated at full-power mode by default, resulting in high electricity usage and energy bills for Gevorkyan. The item allegedly continued to mine cryptocurrency for Bitmain until it was configured to Gevorkyan’s personal crypto account.
Bitmain’s mining equipment is reported to
