There’s a lot of rules you could be caught breaking at school that will get you into trouble: Passing notes in class, sleeping during class, fighting, cheating on a test, smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, etc.
But mining cryptocurrency on a middle school campus has got to be the most 2018 version of breaking school rules that could happen. Oh yeah, and before you marvel at these highly advanced middle school students who are already mining coins, the rule breakers were actually adult administrators.
According to Coindesk (via Hong Kong news outlet HK01), “Puman Middle School in Hunan province had been experiencing higher than normal noise levels from its computers over recent months, even on the holidays.” The school also found that its IT had drastically slowed, “while electricity consumption had almost doubled from July to November.”
The school’s general manager had initially put the energy usage spike down to overuse of air conditioners, but an investigation revealed that that the school’s principal, Lei Hua, and vice principal, Wang Zhipeng, had installed nine computers worth around $7,000 in total to mine the ethereum cryptocurrency, the report states.
HK01 indicates that the principal had initially set up the mining machines at his home, but was dismayed at the electricity costs incurred as a result. So, he installed the machines in a school dormitory and effectively stole the required power.
The school reportedly lost electricity to the value of $2,163, for which the principal has been punished and removed from his post at the school, as well as within the Communist Party. The vice principal was given a warning.
As Coindesk notes, there have been other instances of workers getting in trouble for mining cryptocurrencies at work, including a former employee at the Federal Reserve Board of Directors who was fired and fined $5,000 for mining Bitcoin on the central bank’s servers.
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