Malaysian electric utility goes after illegal bitcoin miners who steal power
- Tenaga Nasional has proposed a special tariff for miners in the country where power theft cases surged to 7,209 in 2021 from 610 in 2018
- Some Malaysian miners steal electricity by tampering with meter installation or gaining an illegal connection
Tenaga, which counts Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional as its largest shareholder, is seeing an increasing number of cases where electricity is used to mine the cryptocurrency illegally – and expects the tally to continue to grow, president and Chief Executive Officer Baharin Din said in an interview.
Cryptocurrency mining, an often energy-intensive computing process via which bitcoin and other tokens are created, has grown rampantly across the globe as digital assets increased exponentially in value. While there are some efforts to make the process greener, it’s regarded in many situations as environmentally unfriendly.
In Malaysia, cryptocurrency mining itself isn’t illegal. But some miners steal electricity, for instance by tampering with meter installation or bypassing the meter and gaining an illegal connection.
Cases of electricity theft involving illegal bitcoin mining operators surged to 7,209 in 2021 from 610 in 2018, according to Tenaga.