Microsoft bans cryptomining from its cloud services to protect customers

[midian182]

In brief: Microsoft has updated its licensing agreements to ban cryptomining from its online services. Any customers wishing to continue mining crypto on a Microsoft-hosted service will first need written permission from the company, but this will only be considered for "Testing and Research for security detections."

As reported by The Register, Microsoft updated its Universal License Terms for Online Services for its range of Azure Services and Dynamic 365 Services to prohibit cryptomining without the company's prior approval. It covers any "Microsoft-hosted service to which Customer subscribes under a Microsoft volume licensing agreement." The updated document is mostly related to Azure and came into effect on December 1.

The Acceptable Use Policy section states: "Neither Customer, nor those that access an Online Service through Customer, may use an Online Service: to mine cryptocurrency without Microsoft's prior written approval."

Microsoft seems to have slipped much of the update under the radar. But in a Partner Community post yesterday, Microsoft Channel Sales Lead Daniil Biktimirov wrote that the updated policy was to explicitly prohibit mining for cryptocurrencies across all Microsoft Online Services.

The Redmond giant told The Register it introduced the change because cryptocurrency mining can disrupt or impair its online services. It added that users could often be linked to cyber fraud and abuse attacks such as unauthorized access to and use of customer resources.

Microsoft is joining Google Cloud in requiring users to attain written permission before cryptomining, as does Digital Ocean. Oracle and OVH don't allow it at all, while Amazon Web Services does not allow it in its free tier.

The crypto industry is in a crisis right now. Governments are rushing to introduce tighter regulation following the implosion of crypto exchange FTX, which recently resulted in Sam Bankman-Fried's arrest on fraud and money laundering charges. We've also heard of miners unable to repay millions in loans being forced to hand over their mining rigs that had been used as collateral. With the prices of digital assets crashing, cryptomining isn't the lucrative or secure pastime it once was, all of which could have played a part in Microsoft's decision, beyond it being only about the safety of customers and its online services.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96986-microsoft-bans-cryptomining-cloud-services-protect-customers.html

 

[mattferg]

Jesus, what research went into this topic?

1. Miners are losing money because Ethereum went PoS. Any sensible miner left well before this
2. Because of the above, you can’t really mine any notable currency on Microsoft’s services. They aren’t hosting ASICs
3. Because of number 1, this article and the petty comments at the end are irrelevant. Miners aren’t mining any more because PoW is dead on GPUs.

 

[VitalyT]

Microsoft hard at it, crapping out a PR to show their support for economy, and against crypto world. Never mind nobody is really using their cloud for crypto mining these days. They just want to show they are doing something, hollow as they are, they are in fact doing nothing, just feeding their corporate ego with political BS.

Just to clarify, I am in no way supporting crypto here. In fact, I am confident we are about to see another major leg down for bitcoin, over the worsening overall crypto environment, and aligned with the annual December dump. To be even more frank, I am holding a large BTC short from 17,860 right now, and it starts looking better and better by the minute.

 

[Fearghast]

Well, I hope it does not affect Minecraft servers!

 

[emmzo]

Microsoft hard at it, crapping out a PR to show their support for economy, and against crypto world. Never mind nobody is really using their cloud for crypto mining these days. They just want to show they are doing something, hollow as they are, they are in fact doing nothing, just feeding their corporate ego with political BS.

Just to clarify, I am in no way supporting crypto here. In fact, I am confident we are about to see another major leg down for bitcoin, over worsening overall crypto environment, and aligned with the annual December dump.

It's funny how everyone is distancing oneself from crypto now, when it's nearly dead, but they kept quiet when the money was rolling.

 

[VitalyT]

It's funny how everyone is distancing oneself from crypto now, when it's nearly dead, but they kept quiet when the money was rolling.

The money was rolling on the back of a major bull market, fueled by greed, as usual. And at that point, the world at large knew little about crypto, except that it looked like a working quick-rich scheme. Now that crypto has shown its ugly side, things are different. For myself, I don't care, I look at it as a good opportunity for shorting, nothing more.

 

[emmzo]

The money was rolling on the back of a major bull market, fueled by greed, as usual. And at that point, the world at large knew little about crypto, except that it looked like a working quick-rich scheme. Now that crypto has shown its ugly side, things are different. For myself, I don't care, I look at it as a good opportunity for shorting, nothing more.

All your short winnings will be gone when they block your account. Remember, it's not a regulated stock exchange, it's a private exchange where they say they play by the rules, but break them every time, because they can.

 

[VitalyT]

All your short winnings will be gone when they block your account. Remember, it's not a regulated stock exchange, it's a private exchange where they say they play by the rules, but break them every time, because they can.

That's too grim an outlook. I trade on Binance, which is the biggest exchange today, and they do not close accounts at whim. And if they go down, the entire crypto market will end, and for good.

 

[emmzo]

That's too grim an outlook. I trade on Binance, which is the biggest exchange today, and they do not close accounts at whim. And if they go down, the entire crypto market will end, and for good.

Funny, that's what people said about FTX, except it was the second largest.

 

[dangh]

Haha, so they banning mining after it died so ms won't lose anything that is a great pr and typical corpo crap

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That's too grim an outlook. I trade on Binance, which is the biggest exchange today, and they do not close accounts at whim. And if they go down, the entire crypto market will end, and for good.

If those coins are not on your hard drive, you own absolutely nothing and will be left holding the bag when binance inevitably goes under.

Oh hey, they suspended withdrawals. Uh oh....

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/cry...rarily-halts-usdc-stablecoin-withdrawals.html

 

[Ludak021]

That's too grim an outlook. I trade on Binance, which is the biggest exchange today, and they do not close accounts at whim. And if they go down, the entire crypto market will end, and for good.

Thought experiment: When they got rid of Pablo Escobar, why didn't all drug related trade stop? (edit: better yet, why did none of it stop? )

 

[VitalyT]

Thought experiment: When they got rid of Pablo Escobar, why didn't all drug related trade stop? (edit: better yet, why did none of it stop? )

You are way off here. Drug trades never stopped because even on a small scale it was able to create a huge margin. Crypto on a small scale doesn't exist, especially without exchanges.

 

[Ludak021]

It's not hard to open the exchange, vacuum is never tolerated when theres money to be made. I guess we'll have to disagree. Crypto existed and was traded before binance existed btw. I should know, I traded it, and never ever used binance or wanted to. There are still thousands of exchanges all over the world.

 

[Rq3EWAq]

"The Redmond giant told The Register it introduced the change because cryptocurrency mining can disrupt or impair its online services."

Of course. When you sell more CPU power than you have, and users start saturating given CPU resources, problems arise. They had to ban crypto mining to reduce load, power bill and responsiveness for everyone else. That shows what percentage of "quad core" or whatever VPS configuration you are promised, you can really use as a paying customer.

 

[Rq3EWAq]

I trade on Binance, which is the biggest exchange today (...) And if they go down, the entire crypto market will end, and for good.

Bitcoin was working before any exchange even existed, and it will continue to work just fine when Binance shuts down, I thought everyone understood that by now?

 

[Rq3EWAq]

Jesus, what research went into this topic?

1. Miners are losing money because Ethereum went PoS. Any sensible miner left well before this
2. Because of the above, you can’t really mine any notable currency on Microsoft’s services. They aren’t hosting ASICs
3. Because of number 1, this article and the petty comments at the end are irrelevant. Miners aren’t mining any more because PoW is dead on GPUs.

And what research went into your post?
Ethereum, ETH PoS, Bitcoin has NOTHING to do with mining on VPS servers.

You could only ever mine CPU coins on Microsoft cloud VPS servers. No GPU, no ASIC. That means, Monero and the like, nothing else.

 

[VitalyT]

Bitcoin was working before any exchange even existed, and it will continue to work just fine when Binance shuts down, I thought everyone understood that by now?

What you do not understand is, Binance health right now is the last thing that holds crypto market from complete collapse. And if Binance falls, it will signal to the whole world the end of the crypto fairy tale. It doesn't matter at this point what existed before all the exchanges, if Binance falls, there will be no more money flowing in from any organization. The remaining gamblers will of course persist, but they will be irrelevant, and the crypto market will be more like an AA (alcoholics anonymous) club.

 

[Rq3EWAq]

What you do not understand is, Binance health right now is the last thing that holds crypto market from complete collapse. And if Binance falls, it will signal to the whole world the end of the crypto fairy tale. It doesn't matter at this point what existed before all the exchanges, if Binance falls, there will be no more money flowing in from any organization. The remaining gamblers will of course persist, but they will be irrelevant, and the crypto market will be more like an AA (alcoholics anonymous) club.

"Complete collapse" if Binance falls, yeah right. Dude you again forgetting that Bitcoin (not useless 99.9% of other cryptocurrencies) will be just fine without biggest centralized exchange. FTX collapsed and what? Bitcoin stopped working? Ethereum stopped working? No. Bitcoin doesn't need corporate approvals or centralized exchanges to work, it just don't care. You are talking about price, that's your problem. Price and amount of bag holders is irrelevant for Bitcoin to work.

 

[VitalyT]

"Complete collapse" if Binance falls, yeah right. Dude you again forgetting that Bitcoin (not useless 99.9% of other cryptocurrencies) will be just fine without biggest centralized exchange. FTX collapsed and what? Bitcoin stopped working? Ethereum stopped working? No. Bitcoin doesn't need corporate approvals or centralized exchanges to work, it just don't care. You are talking about price, that's your problem. Price and amount of bag holders is irrelevant for Bitcoin to work.

What do you mean by saying "for Bitcoin to work"? Being moved around among remaining speculators? That's not much of work, not what Bitcoin was created for.

It will be back to its roots...