Crimean Government Workers Fired for Mining Bitcoin at Work

Two officials working in the IT department of the Council of Ministers in Crimea, were fired after being caught mining Bitcoins in office.

As Bitcoin gains popularity and rises in price, we are increasingly seeing instances of fraud and unethical conduct by those trying to profit from the boom.

According to RIA Novosti, two government employees at the Council of Ministers in Crimea were recently dismissed after being caught mining Bitcoins inside the government building.

Alexander Akshatin, the Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Committee, believes that the employees being fired will serve as a lesson for those who may consider doing something like this in the future.

"People are fired, I think that in the future, no one will desire [to do this]."

He added that the workers were in part of the IT-department at the Council of Ministers and were caught before they were able to earn much or cash out their mined Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is the world’s leading cryptocurrency, trading around $4,200 at the time of writing. New Bitcoins are generated by mining, which is a resource-intensive process requiring computer-power and electricity.

The profitability of such an operation depends on the cost of electricity and the hardware used, which is why unscrupulous elements try to mine Bitcoin secretly, using either work computers or by installing malicious software on unsuspecting users.

Cases such as these have been popping up more often now, with the recent instance of torrent site The Pirate Bay, which was caught mining Monero cryptocurrency using a browser-based script that hogged resources from visitors on the site.

Another example of this is the recent browser mining episode involving Showtime.com, where experts believe hackers inserted a malicious code in the site to hijack visitors’ CPU power.

With the technological challenges that arise with blockchain development and integration, it is becoming clear that users will also need to be educated on security issues that accompany these developments.