During the elevating theft incidents across the Bitcoin (BTC) mining sector in Malaysia, the electricity utility platform of the country is suggesting unique means to handle the issue. Tenaga Nasional Bhd. is devising a strategy to implement an exclusive tariff specifically for the operators of BTC mining where the members will be permitted to request for regulated supply as reported by Bloomberg.

A spike in electricity theft across Malaysia

As per the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President of the firm, Bahrain Din, the illegitimate utilization of energy for digital currencies’ mining will potentially elevate in the next few days. Tenaga mentions that nearly 7,209 cases were related to illegitimately benefiting from electricity to do BTC mining, which is a substantial increase from the number witnessed in 2018 as 610. In addition to this, Bahrain assesses that the theft of electricity from 2018 to 2021 was positioned at $550M and 18 persons have been caught by the police.

It is important to note that to circumvent regulators, crypto miners have returned to the operations like interfering meter installation or entirely powering the operations thereof without the utilization of meters as well as the illegitimate connections. Bahrain also revealed that the irresponsible culprits are performing these actions at the cost of supply’s reliability as well as security to a great extent. Uncertified connections of electricity can additionally cause fire risks.

As reported earlier, it was disclosed that the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) of Malaysia – Bukit Aman – confiscated equipment related to BTC mining now has a worth of up to RM54 (almost $12.9M). in comparison with 2020, when the value of the seized instruments was RM1.26M (approximately $331,00), denoting an increase of 4,185%. To take illegitimate miners into custody, several state-based organizations have been collaborated with by Tenaga, taking account of the local councils, the Energy Commission, the police, as well as the anti-graft body.

Implementation of crypto regulations

Apart from this, professionals are also suggesting the utilization of technology such as the systems of data management, smart metering, as well as for analytic software that assist in providing supply information as well as the accessibility to critical demand of power. As the country has placed an outright ban over the mining of crypto, it is yet ambiguous how the implementation of the proposal will be carried out after its approval.