Recently, there was a commotion in the crypto community because popular Youtuber Siraj Raval claimed that he had been mining $800 worth of ether (ETH) a month only by using his Tesla Model 3. According to the CNBC report, the YouTuber said he could mine cryptocurrency by using a bunch of GPUs. The battery of his electric vehicle powers these GPUs. Although doing so could void the vehicle’s warranty, Raval says it’s “worth it” since he was earning as much as $800 monthly.
However, other Tesla aficionados doubted Raval’s claims. During an interview with CNBC, miner Thomas Somers said that the numbers presented by Raval are highly unlikely because they’re impossible. He asserts that Tesla Model 3 GPUs can only provide 7-10 Mh/s. And if you have a look at Etherscan’s data, such capacities could only bring Raval approximately $13 per month at an ETH rate of $3149.
Let’s say that we’re using the historical maximum ETH rate of $4812. In that case, Raval would only earn up to $20 a month. At this time, the YouTuber has yet to comment on these criticisms.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Raval was in the middle of a scandal. Nearing the end of 2019, he was discovered plagiarizing a scientific article related to neural qubits.
According to user @AndrewM_Webb, the YouTuber stole entire article chunks from other authors who wrote about the same topic, namely, Nathan Killoran, Seth Lloyd, and their co-authors. In other cases, Raval merely paraphrased quotes from the original.
He Admits to Previous Lie
About a month after the plagiarism issue, Raval published a YouTube video where he confessed to frequently copying someone else’s code to use in his videos. The worst part is that he would present the work as his own. However, despite the apology, he never apologized or commented on the article’s plagiarism.
