Bitcoin Forum

The NSF or National Science Foundation Office of the Inspector General (OIG) just posted on their website their March 2014 Semiannual Report to Congress (PDF with metadata create date of 5/27). This report contains a write-up on an “Administrative Investigation” by the OIG entitled “Government-wide Suspension Recommended for Researcher Who Used NSF-Funded Supercomputers to Mine Bitcoins” (full extract at bottom).

Via

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/13774/government-bans-professor-mining-bitcoin-superc

Why did I laugh so hard at this?

Because the government owns so many their self.  Wouldn't be surprised if they create it.  Either way bitcoin is run by greedy tyrants who do not value free speech.

But they say that the current mining power is 52,000 times over the mightiest super computer (seqouia) , so the proffesor was able to mine only 0.06 every day with that super computer, not a good move.

I LOL'ed from this one, in concurrence - "we can't MINE btc, WE CAN'T!!!!!! It sets the tone that we consider BTC creation as legitimate as USD printing"

Indeed I believe is pretty funny also ;D

Breach of trust.  Go figure.  That's the catch all.

+1

if your job was to look into genes, and they found out you were playing farmville, looking at porn or mining while using the agencies systems, expect to get sacked.

although this is old news (about 2 years now) its not about banning bitcoins, the news is about a guy that was not doing his job and costing the agency money by wasting electric on non contractual purposes.

im not even sure why coindesk is bumping old news but i am sure of why the OP wanted to twist the words in such a way..the OP is obviously a tin foil hat wearing, government hating conspiracy theorist that thinks that its a ploy against bitcoin..

.. moving on

add this to the long list of IT Sys Admins whom have been busted. In Australia, the natioanl TV broadcaster (the ABC) sacked one of their head IT Sys Admins for using the networks down time to mine BTC. Makes me wonder how many go undetected  :)

i was thinking the same. probably because professors are looked at as esteemed people, and the guy who did this is just LOL.

I'm skeptical both that they claim it used $150k in electricity and that it was able to mine that much bitcoin.  Most supercomputers are just a lot of standard CPUs.  Even if it had GPUs in there (like Nvidia Tesla which is used in some supercomputers) I would think the hashrate would still be significantly lower than a couple ASIC miners (and well below the quoted $8-$10k over 6 days.

Hmm, can't find the hashing power for the supercomputer, anyone have an idea?;)

Im sure with his job, he could have afforded an ASIC...

So much for unknown percentage of hashing power.  ;D

the super computer was mining off hundreds of CPU's.. for stuff like genes research CPU power is great. but using all the CPU's for bitcoin mining was not economical. these days a single ASIC is more hash power efficient then 10,000 CPU's

The professor is going to need a way to replace all that lost income:
His next plan is to launch a great new alt coin.  :D

ProfCoin comes to mind, designed for professors who've been sacked. Now, SackCoin comes to mind.

My wife is a professor. You would be shocked to see how different some of our friends in academia are from their on campus personality. I have been to wilder parties with academics than I ever saw in college.

How come nobody mentioned dogecoin that was mentioned in the article linked in the OP?: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/13774/government-bans-professor-mining-bitcoin-supercomputer/

lol...

I may or may not have used government computers under my control to mine bitcoins.

We now have proof that US Gov't computers are mining Bitcoin.
Let's make sure the Federal Reserve doesn't influence the Bitcoin Foundation to change the block rewards.  :o

Miners and the community as a whole would never allow it. That is why I believe bit coin has a long and bright future.

It is wasting resource. CPU mining is not efficient as ASIC miner, I am sure he is able to afford some mining rig.

No one is pointing out the obvious fact that he was fooling around with workplace equipment for his own personal benefit? That super computer wasn't his. No one would have cared if you were mining coins with your own rig, but this fool was misusing workplace equipment.

Another dumbass who gives crypto a bad name. Who needs ebil US government to shut it down when crypto population is doing such a fine job of ruining their own prospects?

exactly!
He was stealing power and resources from the school. I have no patiences for people like this.

I guess his job did not mean alot to him!

and the government fired him because that is their job. :)

and now you american tax payers can pay him to sit around and do nothing :)

Wow he did it for only 6 days and got caught?  You'd think being one of the brightest supposedly he would come up with a better plan wouldn't you?  to avoid being caught I mean.

One would think so. Maybe that is why he was working for the government instead of in the private sector.

I'm sure the geeks responsible for tech support noticed the bandwidth. They don't miss much those guys.

I think he didn't expect to be caught on the super computer, or, perhaps it was an experiment  :)

Do you mean CPU usage? Bandwidth use for mining is absolutely minimal in my experience. When I first started mining I was worried because I'm out in the boonies with only a Verizon hotspot for a connection and was limited to 4 GB/month. But it turns out that was no problem. Spending too much time in the Poloniex trollbox, however....

"The researcher misused over $150,000 in NSF-supported computer usage at two universities to generate bitcoins valued between $8,000 and $10,000."

Hah! That's it?! That's like 15 btc, or $10,000 per btc mined.

Horseshit.

haha this make me laugh. I like it.

This is a good thing.

This person essentially cheated and used someone else's equipment for his own benefit.

This is the first guy in the gov't to be publicly caught, but you can bet your ass that there are plenty more still flying under the radar...

If he was smart he would have stolen from the government like other employees and used the proceeds to fund his ill gotten BTC.  Unfortunately this professor in stuck on Gilligan's Island.

There was an article, I believe in 2012 that said some guy who was in charge of IT at a middle school was using like 50+ computers to CPU mine bitcoins. This was back when CPU mining was still viable.

I tried to find the article you referenced.

Perhaps you meant the Australian Broadcasting Company?

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/06/22/tips-and-rumours-481/

http://delimiter.com.au/2012/05/21/the-abc-didnt-sack-bitcoin-miner/

Using supercomputer to mine Bitcoin and get ban? Really? How unfair from government. Why wouldnt he user computer tht tax payers payed for his personal gain....

I don't think it was either of those. Although both of those articles were I believe talking about the same incident.

If I remember correctly it was in PA.

It was almost certainly a school and I think the guy was doing it over the summer.

To be honest, this guy got what was coming. He shouldn't have been using it without permission for personal interests, and as such he was banned from working with the gov't.

Unless you think that the money you spend on taxes should be pumped into another individual's attempt at wealth, you should think this is the best thing to be done.

I wonder how fast he mined though. Probably multiple terrahashes...

???
WSJ says its still under investigation.  Basically he didn't  "get" whatever "is coming" yet

"A representative of the agency said the investigation is ongoing, and should be complete before the September report."

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/09/bitbeat-like-a-hurricane-cointerras-giant-bitcoin-mining-plant/

 ::)

I don't know but I did as well :D

He got banned, not much else to it.

He was using it without permission (*Assumed) and so the ban is what he got for doing that.

Was not even worth it.

He did not make much, and now he is the laughing stock.

Awesome, if they only knew all similar cases .. oh well sush-shush better play it safe :)
he should have mined that primecoin, afterall its for science purpuses

He could have easily made a ton if he picked a couple of altcoins. to mine instead, clearly he didn't do enough research before going into it and didn't understand difficulty, but his experiment did tell us one thing, a 51% attack is extremely unlikely because of the cost, which we've known all along, but it was nice to see it confirmed.

There is as much fraud and embezzlement in academia as in most any other professions.  I know several cases in my own department and university that are much worse than that one, in terms of amount of taxpayers money pocketed illegally.

Bitcoiners should not gloat too much, though.  This may have been a healthy community of hopeful, honest, idealist hackers at the beginning, when bitcoins were worthless tokens in an obscure computer science experiment.  But, since then, all the crooks in the  world -- from the street vendor who sold fake hello kitty stuff, to the Russian mafia, and to Wall Street sharks -- have discovered bitcoin, fell in love with it, and immediately aimed their skills at it.  I sometimes doubt that there is now one bitcoin-related enterprise that makes money without swindling someone.  :P

If the incident happeneed 2 years ago, then there were no altcoins around at the time, were there?

What he should have done was mine on a multipool for scrypt coins.

I think LTC may have just been getting started then.

Nice to see a professor not doing research ;D

Could have just played chess on that machine and got more joy.

I don't think that is what tenured professors do.

He was doing some kind of research it just turned out to be what the university did not like/approve of

What he was doing was not research, obviously.  

"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."(*)  He knew very well that that he was making money.  :D

(*) I have seen that definition attributed to Von Braun and to Einstein, possibly with different words.

He claimed that he was doing research and I think he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Yes he was mining bitcoin, however there are several scientific questions about bitcoin that he could have possibly have been researching.

Could be...  but if he kept the mined coins for himself, then there would not be much room for doubt, I'm afraid

He kept the earned bitcoin, but there are still very valid research purposes.

He could have easily have been trying to test gambling sites, tumbling sites, and number of the illicit sites with the earned coins.

We need more people like the above poster in the world! (As much as I know it's sarcasm, I'm playing along).

Don't you see everyone? Just because he did something without permission doesn't mean he's not researching! He probably used those coins to research delivery speed from a number of BTC websites, or did the research to see how long it would take for inflation to render the money made from the coins minuscule!

Silly government!

Found it

How to Get Rich on Bitcoin, By a System Administrator Who's Secretly Growing Them On His School's Computers
by RYAN BRODERICK May 27, 2011

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-to-get-rich-on-bitcoin-by-a-system-administrator-who-s-secretly-growing-them-on-his-school-s-computers

There have been a number of people who have purchased bitcoin for legitimate research purposes such as being able to track/trace bitcoin throughout the network. bitcoin mixers have been tested by researchers. People have attempted to measure the number of TX that are actual trades as opposed to transferring one's own coins to another address they control.

I believe that this is correct, but I'm talking about how you said it.

You talked about illicit sites and so, and so I was playing along with the theme. I have read some of the stories talking about people using BTC to track it through the blockchain, and they are very interesting stories. But I don't believe that was the main topic in your statement.

Although, I didn't know about people using that to measure the amount of transactions. Thank you for bringing this to my attention!