Can you use Australian state supercomputers to mine Ethereum?
Last Updated on 21 September 2020 by CryptoTips.eu
In the classic 1997 movie Contact, young Jodie Foster plays a scientist who uses the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescopes in New Mexico to try and find sings of alien life. The Zemeckis film is often seen as a prequel to the 2014 massive hit Interstellar, which also stars Matthew McConaughey.
Foster is at a certain point accused of using the massive computing power of the telescopes as her personal computer, rather than for the state’s benefit whose payroll she’s on.
An Australian government contractor could have possibly gotten an idea from this film as it emerged over the weekend that he escaped prison time when it was discovered he had used the state’s supercomputers to mine for cryptocurrency.
Former government contractor avoids jail for mining crypto at work: A former government contractor in Australia who mined crypto using state-owned supercomputers has avoided jail time. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Jonathan Khoo was ordered to… https://t.co/dOYem6xPwj
— AYFeeds_Biotech (@AYF_BioTech) September 21, 2020
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the bizarre court case.
Ethereum and Monero
A man by the name of Jonathan Khoo, a former contractor for the Australian government, used the Australian science ministry’s supercomputers, located in a division called CSIRO, to mine for both Ethereum and Monero for his own financial gain. CSIRO stands for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and is funded by taxpayer’s money.
- Also read: Three main methods for mining cryptocurrency
The gentleman in question wasn’t very efficient though: with the code that he installed, the computers used up some $76,000 AUD in electricity for a gain of $10,000 AUD for himself in crypto.
Jonathan Khoo: CSIRO bod mined cryptocurrency with super computers https://t.co/Xa79i8VlNZ
— Tweezy Mate (@tweezymate) September 20, 2020
The court heard about the bizarre stunt and sentenced Mr Khoo to 300 hours of community service.
The court’s press release stated that the man:
Diverted these supercomputer resources away from performing significant scientific research for the nation, including Pulsar Data Array Analysis, medical research and climate modeling work to measure impacts to the environment from climate change.
We can only hope that no one at the Swiss division of CERN gets any ideas, because if those guys would use that computer to mine for crypto instead of looking for a God particle, Bitcoin would touch $20,000 before you know it.
