Police in Malaysia said computers used in cryptocurrency mining activities had caused frequent power outages and can even be considered a fire hazard.
Crypto-mining isn’t necessarily against the law in Malaysia, but cops have publicly crushed bitcoin mining computers for stealing $2.8 million of electricity.
After multiple raids around the airport at Miri, Malaysian authorities seized 1,069 computers, arrested eight men, charged six of them, and destroyed their rigs as a public warning.
Powerful computers are used to solve complex math problems for cryptocurrency mining so its users can maximize rewards.
These, however, consume a lot of electricity.
"The electricity theft for mining bitcoin activities has caused frequent power outages and in 2021, three houses were razed due to illegal electricity supply connections," Miri police chief Hakemal Hawari told media.
The local cops teamed up with an energy company to crack down on crypto-related electricity theft after three homes caught fire due to the miners hooking their operations up to the power grid.
According to analysts from Cambridge University, bitcoin currently consumes around 121 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and could generate harmful amounts of carbon dioxide.
It was one of the reasons Tesla CEO Elon Musk took back his support of the currency and stopped accepting bitcoin for car payments.
Recently, Vietnamese authorities uncovered an attempt to hoard limited edition graphics cards, the Asus RTX 3080 ROG Strix Gundam cards to be used in crypto mining.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is a limited edition model in itself and even more so the Asus Gundam series that was only available in Asia.
Although the Malaysian cops did not reveal the hardware used, it can be assumed that the miners were using high-end products, now flattened by a steamroller.
While netizens have commented on how the PCs could have been salvaged and used for other, more legal purposes, the public execution is enjoyed by many PC fans and builders as revenge against miners hoarding precious PC parts during an international shortage.
Tags: #Malaysia, #cryptocurrency, #cryptomining, #powersupply