A popular Airbnb host has been forced to implement a bizarre new rule when renting her house to guests: no crypto-mining. The change came after guests amassed a $1,500 electric bill during their stay. The guests were seen hauling out at least ten computers and also set up an improvised electric vehicle charging station.
After the experience, the property owner, Ashley, took toher TikTok channelto explain “the weirdest Airbnb rule I had to implement as a host.” She said the guests left home perfectly clean and a “five-star” review after their three-week stay. The problem came later when she received the electric bill for the property.
The guests’ electric bill amounted to $1,500 during their stay. Ashley checked the externalsecuritycameras for the property and watched the visitors haul out at least ten computers when they departed. They’d also set up a charging station for their electric vehicle.
Ashley filed on Airbnb to make the tenants pay the electricity bill, which was a bit of a struggle. She provided documentation to Airbnb, and the guests admitted what they’d done during their stay. In a follow-up comment to her TikTok video, Ashley said the miners told her they had made more than $100,000 mining cryptocurrency, so don’t feel bad for them being forced to pay the $1,500 bill.
We can’t verify the $100K profit number – people havemade more with lesselectricity in the past – but we’ve reached out to Ashley to see if she can put us in touch with the miners to ask them about it (we’ll update this article if we hear back). But even if they made a smaller profit, the issue of miners using Airbnb to get low-cost electricity remains a challenge for hosts.
Ashley remarked, “It was cheaper for them to rent a house to pay for that electricity.” She’s since added “no crypto-mining” and “no electric vehicle charging” to her list of house rules for the property. Others who commented on the video reported similar happenings. One person in the comments said someone else told him about mining crypto in Airbnb properties and that he was “astonished he gets away with it.”
Mining cryptocurrency is an energy-intensive undertaking, with recent reports divulging that just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of the total electricity produced in the U.S. Aspiring miners will often take whatever steps they can to minimize the expense. That sometimes means renting a property on Airbnb and mining from that vacation home or apartment.
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Jeff Butts has been covering tech news for more than a decade, and his IT experience predates the internet. Yes, he remembers when 9600 baud was “fast.” He especially enjoys covering DIY and Maker topics, along with anything on the bleeding edge of technology.
