News & Reviews:   bitcoin mining

The Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) yesterday revealed that a total of 627 individuals and RM69.8 worth of itemas have been seized since 2020 in cases related to illegal bitcoin mining in our country. Furthermore, the cases involved electricity theft for the cryptocurrency mining activities.

Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani in a statement yesterday said that the arrests were made possible thanks to cooperation between Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) and the Criminal Investigation Department (JSJ). In fact, PDRM even received 9 Mitsubishi Tritons from TNB to be used for combating electricity theft in Malaysia.

With the rising cases of electricity theft due to illegal bitcoin mining in Malaysia, the Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) just submitted a proposal to the Energy Commission. The proposal? Set a special tariff for bitcoin miners.

We have talked about this before but in case you haven't, bitcoin miners have been siphoning lots of electricity. Even though a couple of bitcoin mining operations have been busted over the few years, the government reported that there has been an estimated loss of electricity for more than RM2.3 billion.