<p>How much electricity does the crypto-currency sector need? After all the talk that bitcoin consumes furious amounts of energy, the first scientific work with estimates finally appeared. The data in it supports the point of view of pessimists. The level of energy consumption may double by the end of this year, and if it continues to grow at the current rate, by the end of 2019, bitcoin may use more energy than all solar cells can produce. Therefore, many people want to mine at someone else's expense.</p><p>   Calculations published this week in the journal Joule, are not new. The author Alex de Vries has already published them in the past, but only now the expert community gave them an assessment. In his work de Vries writes that one should take into account such a factor as the possibility of theft of electricity. And this, perhaps, is one of the most interesting aspects of the study.</p><p>   There are a lot of examples of cryptojacking - hacking computers for the purpose of mining. It has mixed dubious applications, corporate websites, and even Starbucks coffee houses. In this case, the user opens or downloads something, and the free computing power of his computer is used for mining without the knowledge of the owner. De Vries does not write about this at all: he cites examples of people deliberately abusing the resources of companies and scientific foundations. Below are the five most impressive examples.</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>Russian nuclear scientists were detained for attempting to master crypto-currency on government computers</strong></em></span></p><p>  The beauty of this case lies in the absurdity of the place where this story occurred. Russian scientists were not in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but at the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in the city of Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod region. This center is also known as the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF).Since the middle of the last century, Soviet atomic weapons have been designed and built there. The center is a regime enterprise in a closed area, where there is no access for tourists. The computers of the nuclear center (among which the most powerful in Russia) were not connected with the Internet. When in February 2018 one of the scientists tried to connect supercomputers to the World Wide Web, the security department sounded the alarm. A group of employees was detained and a filed criminal charges against them.</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>Arrest of an employee of the Citrus Department in Florida</strong></em></span></p><p>   In March of this year, the IT manager of the Citrus Department in Florida (yes, this is the name of the department responsible for the production of citrus crops in the state) was arrested for mining bitcoin and lightcoin, as reported by the local newspaper Tampa Bay Times.</p><p>   Unlike the episode with the Russians, Matthew Davenport got caught just like most unlawful miners: someone noticed an increase in electricity costs. When the monthly bill jumped $ 825, Davenport's colleagues in the Citrus Department suspected something was amiss. In addition, Davenport spent more than $ 20,000 of the state's funds for mining equipment.</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>The US government removed the work of a professor secretly passing coins on the supercomputers of the National Science Foundation</strong></em></span></p><p>   We want to believe that scientists - especially those hired by government agencies set up with taxpayers' money - will turn out to be decent people. S<span>ometimes we're wrong</span><span>.</span> Supercomputers of the National Science Foundation are designed to find a cure for cancer. In March 2014, this organization suspected the employee that he used the equipment for personal enrichment. And it cost the fund huge bills for electricity.</p><p>   The semi-annual report, which the National Science Foundation provided to Congress in March 2014, reported: "The researcher spent $ 150,000 of the fund's funds on computers in two universities to produce bitcoins in the amount of $ 8,000 to $ 10,000".</p><p>   The scientist claimed that he conducted tests on computers, but representatives of both universities say that he unintentionally remotely penetrated into computer systems, after which he tried to hide activity - in particular, by connecting to one of the supercomputers through a mirror site in Europe.</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>A Harvard student mined Dogecoin on a supercomputer</strong></em></span></p><p>   Many students use the free electricity of the campus for the crypto currency. Our case stands out in that the student Minnil Dogecoin is a parodic "digital p2p-currency with open source code, the choice of siba-inu all over the world." This incident forced the assistant of Dean of the Department of Research in the field of scientific computing, Harvard James Cuff, to write to students an e-mail with the appeal "not to let it happen again". Blessed who believes: it will be repeated.</p><p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>Employee of the Federal Reserve System was engaged in mining in the workplace<br /></strong></em></span></p><p>   The case is outstanding, as, as is well known, the US Federal Reserve is called upon to control real money. However, the analyst of technical means of communication, Nicholas Bert, did not believe that the employer will be able to control its activities. As a result, Berthomi was sentenced to a probationary period and ordered to pay $ 5.000.</p><p><span>   What opportunities does the Russian employer have to take responsibility for mining? For the fact that the employee spends working time on personal matters, the employer has the right to bring him to disciplinary responsibility under art. 192 of the Labor Code of Russian Federation, explains the head of the legal department of the Russian IT company Olga Kozlova.That is, the company can make a note, pronounce a reprimand and even fire. And the material responsibility for the consumed electricity will not be borne by the miner, since in accordance with Art. 238 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the employee reimburses only the damage caused directly to the property of the employer, to which the consumption of electricity does not apply, says the lawyer.</span></p>