Users are also accused of stealing power from power-hungry machines.
PUBLISHED: 9 Jan 2025 at 11: 51
In the Chon Buri district’s Phanat Nikhom area, authorities and electricity officials have seize 996 bitcoin mining equipment from a business that they claim also stole a lot of money to operate them.
According to Pol Maj Gen Montree Theskhan, the Crime Suppression Division commander, the equipment were detained on Wednesday during a raid at Fast Co in tambon Na Wang Hin.
He claimed the business was authorized to trade online assets, but that it also robbed power by running the cryptocurrency mining rigs with modified power meters.
The element had solar panels installed, but they were disconnected from the devices.
According to estimates, power companies suffered losses worth hundreds of millions of baht.
Because the billions of estimates involved require a lot of computing power, crypto mine is a very power-intensive activity. Studies in the US showed that, in 2023, even the most highly efficient setups would consume about 155, 000 kilowatt hours (k Wh ) of electricity to mine a single bitcoin.
In Thailand, assuming a power price of 4 baht per k Wh, that works out to 620, 000 baht. According to estimates, the average household’s monthly electricity bill in Thailand is 750 ringgit.