Mexico's cartels are running secret crypto mines in the mountains
Crypto farm in Mexican mountains puts spotlight on cartel funding
Police in Puebla found a hidden crypto farm with 300 GPUs and 80 medium-voltage terminals, believed to be stealing power from a nearby hydroelectric dam. It's the fourth such operation uncovered since early last year, as Mexican cartels move beyond drugs into crypto laundering. Globally, illicit crypto transactions doubled in 2025 to $154 billion.
Drug cartels appear to have reached a new level of sophistication.
- roenxi
> Nestled in the lush green mountains of Central Mexico, next to a sparsely traveled gravel road...
The economics of this are deliciously surreal and in many ways slightly romantic. You have this dingy little shack-like construction out in the "lush green mountains", run by these lunatics of a Mexican persuasion, coordinating billions of dollars of international financial data in a reliable high-trust manner. I encourage everyone to look at the photo in the article and imagine a fat dude in a singlet sleeping on a hammock because that seems to be the vibe of the place.
This is a real case of the truth being stranger than fiction. If I were reading about this sort of thing in a novel in the pre-crypto era it'd be a big building in a city or something. Maybe some dudes in suits. Sealed roads.
Turns out it's going to be closer to an unwashed hermit sitting in their mountain cave spending the days meditating, fighting off snakes and tending to the server racks. Voila, high finance.
- Havoc
Surprised they're getting busted. Running covert farms like this seems like an excellent fit for cartels.
You can do this in a distributed manner. Grid connections are hard to trace if you bribe/threaten the right people.
Tempted to conclude that what they are busting must be the tip of the iceberg
- jimz
Yeah, how much of this came from the US government? Considering how little hardware has been auctioned versus how much has been subject to forfeiture in view of the DEA's long track record of creating the funding loop.
Context:
https://archive.org/details/a-20071-1
Raw data:
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