{"id":4193,"date":"2018-11-09T10:46:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T10:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/chinese-headmaster-fired-over-secret-coin-mining-at-school\/"},"modified":"2018-11-09T10:46:13","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T10:46:13","slug":"chinese-headmaster-fired-over-secret-coin-mining-at-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/chinese-headmaster-fired-over-secret-coin-mining-at-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese headmaster fired over secret coin mining at school"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Mining machines can make their owners rich – but they soak up lots of electricity
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A Chinese headmaster has been fired after a secret stack of crypto-currency mining machines was found connected to his school’s electricity supply.<\/p>\n

Teachers at the school in Hunan became suspicious of a whirring noise that continued day and night, local media report.<\/p>\n

This led to the discovery of the machines, which were mining the crypto-currency Ethereum.<\/p>\n

They racked up an electricity bill of 14,700 yuan (\u00a31,600).<\/p>\n

The excessive electricity consumption had previously been reported to the headmaster, Lei Hua, but he reportedly dismissed it as being caused by air conditioners and heating devices.<\/p>\n

Mining crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum involves connecting computers, usually specialised “mining machines”, to the currency network.<\/p>\n

By providing computing power for validating transactions on that network, mining-machine owners are rewarded with newly generated coins, making it a potentially lucrative exercise – especially when done at scale.<\/p>\n

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Media caption<\/span>Bitcoin explained: How do crypto-currencies work?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this case, a total of eight mining machines were installed in the Hunan school’s computer room between summer 2017 and summer 2018.<\/p>\n

The headmaster had originally spent 10,000 yuan on a single machine for use at home, but allegedly decided to move it to the school after he saw how much electricity it consumed.<\/p>\n

The deputy headmaster also became involved in the scheme and allegedly acquired a ninth machine for himself in January, which was also installed at the school.<\/p>\n

The computer network in the building became overloaded as a result of the mining activity, according to reports, and this “interfered” with teaching.<\/p>\n

The headmaster was fired in October and his deputy received an official warning.<\/p>\n

A local authority responsible for “discipline inspection” has claimed the money that was made through the mining activities.<\/p>\n

Surreptitious crypto-currency mining has been discovered elsewhere. In February, several scientists at a top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility were arrested<\/a> for allegedly mining Bitcoin with the facility’s supercomputers.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mining machines can make their owners rich – but they soak up lots of electricity A Chinese headmaster has been fired after a secret stack of crypto-currency mining machines was found connected to his school’s electricity supply. Teachers at the school in Hunan became suspicious of a whirring noise … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}