Malaysia exerts justice on Bitcoin Miners via steamroller

Bitcoin’s rising value has caused a rise in energy theft across the world, where cryptocurrency miners steal electricity from their country’s power grid to fuel the power demands of their power-hungry enterprises. 

For cryptocurrency miners, power is a factor that contributes to the profitability of all major mining operations. The higher your electricity costs, the less profitable your cryptomining operation becomes. That said, if you are stealing your power, this cost is removed from the equation and profitability soars. Beyond that, such criminal actions can also make inefficient cryptocurrency mining tools profitable.  

Thanks to a series of six raids in Miri Malaysia, 1,069 bitcoin miners were seized, and six people were fined and jailed. The value of the cryptocurrency mining tools seized has an estimated value of $1.25 million. These raids were conducted as part of a joint operation between Miri city authorities and Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB). SEB has estimated that they lost RM8.4 million ($2 million USD) in energy to this illegal mining operation. 

The Malaysian Government has decided to administer justice on these seized Bitcoin miners using a steamroller, destroying the precious machines so that they can no longer be used as part of illegal cryptocurrency mining operations. Better still is the fact that this was captured on video (via Dayak Daily), showcasing the destruction as it happened. 

While many outlets have called the cryptocurrency mining tools PCs and have complained that Malaysia could have repurposed these machines, it is worth noting that the machines in question appear to be dedicated ASIC miners, hardware that is designed exclusively to mine specific cryptocurrencies. These “PCs” cannot be repurposed as consumer PC and selling them would lead to the creation of new cryptocurrency mining operations.  

 In this case, the destruction of these ASIC miners was the only viable option for the Malaysian justice system. According to the Miri Police, illegal electricity supply connections have lead to frequent power outages and three home-razing electrical fires in 2021. Currently, the Miri Police are working on new ways to detect illegal electricity connections and cryptocurrency mining operations.