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Council Staffers Fired for Bitcoin Mining in Crimea
Two employees of the Council of Ministers in Crimea have been fired after getting caught mining bitcoins on official computers.
By Stan Higgins
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 7:00 a.m. Published Oct 5, 2017, 10:00 a.m. 1 min read
Two IT workers employed by an authority in Crimea were fired late last month after they were reportedly caught mining bitcoins at work.
reports that the two unnamed individuals were employees of the Council of Ministers of Crimea, part of the disputed territory's executive branch. The news service indicates the workers installed mining software on computers owned by the council, though the report didn't state how long the operation had been in place.
Through mining – the energy-intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain – the two were said to have raised only a small amount of bitcoin before being discovered.
Whether the council is pursuing charges against the individuals remains uncertain at this time.
The incident is the latest instance in which an employee used official resources to mine bitcoin – only to get caught and terminated for doing so.
In January, an IT employee for the Federal Reserve board of directors was fined $5,000 and put on probation after using a server to mine bitcoins. Later in July, a New York City employee was disciplined after being caught using a government computer to mine bitcoins.
Bitcoin mining image via Shutterstock
Sizin için daha fazlası
CNBC reported Tuesday that Musk is discussing a merger between Tesla and SpaceX that would tie his tech empire closer together and instantly create the world’s fifth-largest corporate bitcoin treasury, worth $3.3 billion.
Bilinmesi gerekenler:
- Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger of Tesla and SpaceX, a move that would deepen operational overlap in areas such as power infrastructure and AI-related computing.
- A combined Tesla-SpaceX entity would control about 30,221 bitcoin, worth roughly $3.3 billion, making it the fifth-largest public corporate holder of the cryptocurrency.
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