Japanese Police Deletes its Warning about Crypto Mining after Losing Monero Case

The long-running Monero (XMR) mining saga that pitted Japanese web developers against the police over the matter of crypto miningsoftware may have come to a close last month, but the police force appears tohave added an intriguing coda – by removing its public warning about the dangers of crypto mining widgets.

The police continued to crack down on the use of these mining widgets,which used site visitors’ CPUs to mine coins. In the case of the Coinhivescript used by Moroi, 70% of the mined tokens were distributed to site publishersand 30% to developers.

The crackdown saw the National Police Agency publiclywarn developers that it considered these widgets to be “viruses,” and post awarning entitled “cautions regarding tools used for mining virtual currencies(mining tools)” on its website.

That warning had remained in place from mid-2018 until earlier thisyear. In the time between, the agency fought a long legal battle with Moroi,with the case going from civil courts to the High Court and finally the SupremeCourt – which eventually ruled in Moroi’s favor.

Using tools from the Internet Archive-operated Wayback Machine,however, the media outlet was able to unearth the page – noting that itappeared to have been live until January 21 – the day the court delivered itsverdict in the case.