A blast in Bandar Puncak Alam metropolis, Malaysia, has unearthed an unlawful Bitcoin mining operation, uncovering one other instance of crypto-related energy theft within the nation.
On Tuesday, smoke and flames erupted from a home on Lorong Cekara Purnama, prompting a misery name from an area resident at 11:41 am, native media reported.
After the fireplace was extinguished at 4:45 pm, investigators discovered a complicated unlawful setup: 9 Bitcoin mining rigs, blower followers, and a D-link router—all linked to an unauthorized energy provide.
The unlawful mining setup provides to Malaysia’s rising downside with crypto-related energy theft, a problem authorities have struggled to deal with.
In Malaysia, whereas Bitcoin mining itself isn’t unlawful, tampering with electrical energy provide traces is a criminal offense punishable beneath Part 37 of the Electrical energy Provide Act, which can lead to fines as much as 100,000 Malaysian ringgit ($23,700) and a jail sentence of as much as 5 years.
Authorities have since opened an investigation, looking for data that may result in an arrest.
The nation’s electrical energy infrastructure has been repeatedly focused by miners utilizing extreme electrical energy. The incident in Bandar Puncak Alam is much from an remoted case throughout the area.
Simply final month, Thai police uncovered an analogous mining operation in Chonburi that had stolen an estimated $3 million in electrical energy, involving over 1,000 mining machines.
Malaysia has skilled roughly $750 million in losses from comparable actions between 2018 and 2023, based on some estimates.
4 years in the past, authorities confiscated over 1,000 Bitcoin mining rigs in Miri, Sarawak, after miners allegedly siphoned $2 million price of electrical energy from the native vitality supplier.
Malaysian authorities in Miri destroyed 1,069 mining rigs seized in a joint operation with Sarawak Power, utilizing a steamroller to crush the gear.
As the value of Bitcoin soared in 2024, now buying and selling at a worth of $97,000, as per CoinGecko knowledge, the environmental value of Bitcoin mining has additionally surged.
Bitcoin’s mining course of consumes huge quantities of vitality, equal to the annual electrical energy consumption of Poland, estimated at 155 TWh to 172 TWh per yr, based on researchers.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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