The Americas | Bitcoin mining

Crypto cowboys have found paradise in Paraguay

Cheap electricity, lax laws and low taxes: what’s not to like?

A maze of overhead electricity and phone cables, Paraguay.
Photograph: Alamy
|ASUNCIÓN

The country is used to drug busts and bank heists. But the hooded gunmen who recently burst into a warehouse in Minga Guazú, in Paraguay’s rural east, weren’t after cocaine, weed or cash. Instead they sped off with 150 sophisticated computers that had been secretly hooked up to the grid. The shaken caretaker called the police. But when they came, he declined to reveal who owned the clandestine bitcoin-mining operation.

This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Pulling the plug”

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