There’s nothing wrong with mining for cryptocurrency. It’s kind of like mining for gold or coal, it’s fine if you invest your own resources into doing it, but less fine if you stole someone’s mining equipment to do it. That can land you in a lot of trouble, which is what some bitcoin miners discovered when their mining operations in Malaysia recently got steamrolled.
No, we’re not talking about being steamrolled in a metaphorical sense, but a literal sense. This is because Malaysian authorities discovered that these bitcoin miners had created a mining operation where they illegally siphoned $2 million worth of electricity from the local power company, Sarawak Energy.
This took place earlier this year where over the course of several raids, the authorities confiscated 1,069 mining rigs, which they then proceeded to destroy by driving a steamroller on top of them. Apparently these machines were said to be worth $1.26 million. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen instances of illegal mining operations get busted.
Not too long ago, authorities in the Ukraine raided a mining farm which was powered by over 5,000 computers and 3,800 PS4 consoles. It was also drawing over $250,000 in electricity costs per month that went unpaid.