In Malaysia’s unlawful Bitcoin (BTC) mining hotspots, the hunt begins within the sky.
Drones buzz over rows of retailers and deserted homes, sweeping for pockets of sudden warmth, which is the thermal signature of machines that shouldn’t be working.
On the bottom, police carry handheld sensors that sniff out irregular energy use. Generally the pursuit is extra low-tech: residents name in with complaints of unusual hen noises, just for officers to find nature sounds getting used to masks the roar of equipment behind closed doorways.
The surveillance web exists as a result of the size of the issue calls for it. As an area information outlet reported, between 2020 and August 2025, authorities caught 13,827 premises stealing electrical energy for crypto mining, largely Bitcoin.
Losses are pegged at roughly 4.6 billion ringgit, value about $1.1 billion, in accordance with state-owned vitality firm Tenaga Nasional (TNB) and the Vitality Transition and Water Transformation Ministry.
By early October, with Bitcoin hitting document highs earlier than collapsing by greater than 30% and rebounding, authorities had logged round 3,000 power-theft instances tied to mining.
The miners they’re chasing are cautious. They hop from empty storefronts to abandoned homes, putting in warmth shields to cloak the glow of their rigs.
They equip entrances with CCTV cameras, heavy-duty safety, and broken-glass deterrents to maintain undesirable guests out.
This cat-and-mouse recreation has been working for years, however the numbers recommend it’s accelerating.
TNB has reported that crypto-linked electrical energy theft rose almost 300% over the previous six years, with cumulative losses of roughly 3.4 billion ringgit between 2018 and 2023 alone.
Including earlier years, the true invoice from Bitcoin energy theft inches nearer to eight billion ringgit. In Perak, landlords have been left with thousands and thousands in unpaid TNB payments as a result of tenants ran unlawful mining operations and walked away, forcing house owners to both chase them or soak up the fees.
The sensor grid behind the crackdown
What started as easy meter checks has advanced right into a multi-layered surveillance operation.
TNB’s management room now watches transformer-level good meters for unexplained losses.
These Distribution Transformer Meters, a part of a pilot program, document the quantity of energy flowing right into a neighborhood circuit in actual time.
If the sum of the client meters beneath seems too low, operators know energy is being diverted someplace in that cluster.
Anomalies kick out a listing of goal streets. Groups then overfly these streets with thermal drones at night time and stroll them with handheld load sensors. That turns what was “knock and peek behind each curler shutter” right into a guided search.
The drones decide up warmth signatures from suspected mining clusters, and the sensors verify irregular attracts.
A 2022 Tenaga briefing already described using drones alongside standard meter inspections, which provides the operation a transparent arc: primary enforcement first, then data-driven monitoring as the issue scales.
The utility has additionally constructed an inside database that hyperlinks suspicious premises to house owners and tenants.
The vitality ministry says that the database is now the reference level for inspections and raids tied to Bitcoin-related energy theft.
It addresses a persistent enforcement drawback: gear is commonly registered to shell entities, and premises are rented or sublet, which dilutes conviction threat even when raids succeed.
On Nov. 19, the federal government rolled out a cross-agency particular committee staffed by the Finance Ministry, Financial institution Negara Malaysia, and TNB to coordinate a crackdown. The deputy vitality minister, Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir, who chairs the panel, frames the chance as existential.
In a current report by Bloomberg Information, he said:
“The chance of permitting such actions to occur is not about stealing. You possibly can really even break our amenities. It turns into a problem to our system.”
Overloaded transformers, fires, and localized blackouts at the moment are a part of the equation.
There’s an open dialogue inside that committee about recommending an outright ban on Bitcoin mining, even when operators pay for energy.
Nasir is blunt:
“Even should you run it correctly, the problem is that the market itself may be very unstable. I don’t see any well-run mining that may be thought-about as profitable legally.”
He has additionally advised the sample of cell websites factors to organized legal syndicates working the present, including that it’s “clearly run by the syndicate, due to how cell they’re from organising in a single place to a different place. It does have modus operandi.”
The economics of meter-tampering
The core financial logic is easy: closely sponsored grid energy, a high-priced asset, and virtually no labor.
Malaysia’s home tariffs have traditionally been low, with stepped residential charges beginning round 21.8 sen per kilowatt-hour for the primary 200 kWh and rising to round 51-57 sen for greater bands.
After an extended freeze, the bottom tariff elevated in 2025 to round 45.4 sen per kWh for the 2025/2027 regulatory interval, and high-usage clients now face further surcharges on consumption above 600 kWh a month.
Even so, analysts and crypto websites summarizing the ministry’s numbers describe Malaysia’s efficient electrical energy costs as roughly $0.01-$0.05 per kWh, relying on class and subsidy.
For a miner working dozens or lots of of ASICs across the clock, the distinction between paying even these sponsored tariffs and paying nothing is the distinction between marginal income and really fats ones.
That creates the motivation to bypass meters solely.
In lots of raids, investigators discover cables tapped instantly into overhead traces or incoming mains earlier than the meter, in order that the recorded consumption for the property seems to be that of a standard small store or home whereas the transformer supplying it runs at a number of occasions the anticipated load.
Akmal has explicitly tied the surge in theft to Bitcoin’s worth, noting in July that with BTC above about 500,000 ringgit per coin, extra operators are “prepared to take the chance of stealing electrical energy for mining.”
The draw back exists, however feels diluted. The Electrical energy Provide Act permits for fines as much as 1 million ringgit and as much as 10 years in jail for meter tampering, and police information present lots of of arrests and tens of thousands and thousands of ringgit in seized gear over the previous couple of years.
However syndicate buildings soften the blow: gear is registered to shells, premises are sublet, and the individuals really working the rigs are not often those holding the lease.
There’s additionally a system-level alternative price. Malaysia is making an attempt to decarbonize its grid by shifting away from coal towards gasoline and photo voltaic, whereas additionally powering a wave of knowledge facilities.
Each stolen kilowatt-hour is energy that would have gone to paying industrial and digital economic system clients as an alternative of subsidizing underground farms.
The place do they go when the lights exit
Regionally, the geography of evasion is hanging. Unlawful miners in peninsular Malaysia hop between empty shoplots, deserted homes, and partially vacant malls, putting in warmth shields, CCTV, and even broken-glass strips over entrances to decelerate raids.
One viral instance was an enormous operation within the largely empty ElementX Mall close to the Strait of Malacca, which solely cleared out after TikTok footage unfold.
In Sarawak, officers have discovered mining gear hidden in distant logging yards or buildings deep inside forested areas, with direct faucets into overhead traces.
What tends to occur after a crackdown isn’t that miners disappear, however that hash energy migrates to the next-cheapest or least-enforced grid.
Globally, the sample is obvious: China’s 2021 mining ban triggered the “Nice Mining Migration,” with fleets of machines heading to Kazakhstan, North America, and different energy-rich jurisdictions.
When Kazakhstan later clamped down on unregistered miners and energy station kickbacks, a few of that {hardware} moved once more, together with into Russia and different elements of Central Asia.
In 2025, newer echoes of that very same dynamic are enjoying out throughout the area. Kuwait is in the course of a sweeping crackdown, raiding properties that have been utilizing as much as 20 occasions the conventional quantity of electrical energy and blaming miners for worsening an influence disaster.
Laos, which initially courted miners with extra hydropower, is now planning to chop off electrical energy to crypto operations by early 2026 to redirect energy to AI information facilities, metallic refining, and EV manufacturing.
China itself, regardless of its 2021 ban, has seen underground mining rebound to an estimated 14% to twenty% of world hashrate by late 2025 as operators exploit low-cost electrical energy and overbuilt data-center infrastructure in energy-rich provinces.
Malaysia is slotting into this broader sample. When enforcement tightens in a single area with low-cost or sponsored energy, miners both go additional underground in that nation, into distant buildings, with higher camouflage and extra aggressive meter-tapping, or they hop to the following jurisdiction the place the maths nonetheless works, and the chance feels manageable.
Akmal all however spells this out, arguing that the mobility of web sites and the velocity with which rigs may be moved level to syndicate-style operations somewhat than hobbyists.
The stakes are not nearly theft. They’re about whether or not Malaysia can defend grid infrastructure that’s speculated to finance a inexperienced transition and a data-center growth, or whether or not it turns into one other method station within the international hunt for affordable electrons, one drone sweep at a time.