The rampant illegal electricity theft for mining cryptocurrencies has caused huge losses to Malaysia

On August 18, according to Malaysia's Sin Chew Daily, in recent years, illegal electricity theft for cryptocurrency mining activities in Malaysia have been extremely rampant, bringing huge losses to the country.

Data shows that from 2018 to June 2024, Malaysia's national energy company received a total of about 11,600 reports of illegal electricity theft for cryptocurrency mining activities, involving an amount of up to 3.7 billion ringgit (about 6 billion yuan). The company has announced a hotline for reporting and called on the public to actively report such illegal activities. The Defiant, a news website focusing on the blockchain finance field, pointed out last month that the Malaysian authorities have been vigorously cracking down on cryptocurrency mining activities at least since 2019. In July 2021, the authorities even dispatched a road roller to publicly crush more than 1,000 "mining machines" used for "mining coins" to strengthen the warning effect.

The tech news website Gadgets360 said that in Malaysia, although cryptocurrencies cannot be used as payment tools, they can be legally traded. Related transactions are regarded as similar to securities transactions and are subject to taxation. However, in reality, tax evasion in cryptocurrency transactions is very serious. In the middle of this year, the Malaysian government launched a special operation to crack down on tax evasion in cryptocurrency transactions. The Malaysian government pointed out that by strengthening tax enforcement, cryptocurrency transactions can be effectively tracked and cryptocurrencies can be prevented from being used for illegal activities. According to the Statista data statistics website, the scale of Malaysia's cryptocurrency market is expected to reach more than 300 million US dollars by the end of this year. Currently, about 3 million Malaysians are active in the cryptocurrency field.