NSF Researcher Suspended For Mining Bitcoin

PvtVoid (1252388) writes "In the semiannual report to Congress by the NSF Office of Inspector General, the organization said it received reports of a researcher who was using NSF-funded supercomputers at two universities to mine Bitcoin. The computationally intensive mining took up about $150,000 worth of NSF-supported computer use at the two universities to generate bitcoins worth about $8,000 to $10,000, according to the report. It did not name the researcher or the universities."

Comments

Throw the book... maybe literally at him.

[Shadowmist]

This is pretty much at the lowest of the low category, Someone who takes up taxpayer funded computer time to mine Bitcoin, should essentially be barred for life form the facility... and that's for starters.

Re:Throw the book... maybe literally at him.

[iroll]

...because you buy time on modern supercomputers all the time, and can give us the real scoop, right?

Re:Throw the book... maybe literally at him.

[lagomorpha2]

well, most likely the computers werent being used for anything else at the time. he was probably only running it in spare time.

Using close to 100% of processing resources would definitely increase overall power consumption for the computers in question. This would result in increased overall cost of operation.

And yet still less wasteful of money and resources than the vast majority of university administrators.

Re:give them probation.... maybe felony if necessa

[iroll]

This is a felony. It's fraud and theft. Good engineers don't get fired for stealing 10% or less of what good engineers in the prime of their careers are making.

He didn't download a movie. He didn't copy that floppy. He appropriated a taxpayer resource to line his pockets.

Re:question

[SuricouRaven]

It has exactly as much intrinsic value as the dollar: None. It has value only because people are willing to trade for it.

Not many people though, which is why the value fluctuates so wildly.