Brazil arrests suspect in electricity theft related to illegal Bitcoin mining

A man in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was arrested for illegally stealing off-grid electricity for cryptocurrency mining. Police found high-performance miners in a rental house that operated around the clock and had no electricity meter installed. While grassroots cryptocurrency mining is legal in Brazil, the government is pushing for stricter regulation, requiring digital miner authorization licenses. São Paulo has taken a similar crackdown as illegal mining puts pressure on the global power grid, and similar incidents have been reported recently by Malaysia, Thailand, Kuwait and Hong Kong.