The principal of a middle school bought 8 Ethereum mining machines and placed them in the computer room. The vice principal followed suit. Both of them were investigated.

Recently, a strange thing happened in Puman Middle School in Jiahe County, Chenzhou, Hunan Province - there were always bursts of noisy machine roars in the computer classroom. The computer classroom is where students learn computers, so it is not strange to have machine noises, but the strange thing is that the disturbing roars in the computer classroom never stop even after school and on holidays, from day to night, without interruption.

There is a strange noise in the classroom and the electricity bill is rising

"In July 2017, the electricity consumption was 4,575 kWh; in September, the electricity consumption was 5,640 kWh; in November, the electricity consumption was 8,130 kWh..." Lei, the general affairs director of Jiahe County Puman Middle School, was puzzled by the school's rising electricity consumption. He reported this abnormal situation to the principal Lei Hua, who replied that "the school's air conditioners and stoves were overused."

Later, more teachers reported that "there was always a lot of noise in the teaching building when sleeping at night" and "the school network was very slow"... Strange things happened one after another, so the teachers went out to find the cause and found that the culprit was the seven high-power computers in the computer classroom on the fifth floor of the teaching building. When they were discovered, they were running day and night.

It turned out that the seven computers belonged to Lei Hua, the school principal. They called them "mining machines". He placed the computers in the school's electronic classroom in order to use the school's network and electricity for free to "mine" Ethereum and make personal profits.

"Mining machine", "Ethereum", "mining"! It sounds new, but how did Lei Hua, as the principal, get in touch with these new things that have nothing to do with education and teaching?

One day in June 2017, Lei Hua's wife's cousin came to visit their home. Seeing that his cousin was unemployed and had nothing to do, he introduced the money-making project of "Ethereum" to Lei Hua and his wife. Ethereum is similar to Bitcoin in that it is a virtual digital currency on the Internet. It is mainly mined through computers equipped with professional "mining" chips.

The Internet uses a specific algorithm to perform a large number of calculations to burn graphics cards to obtain Ethereum. This virtual currency can be exchanged for RMB through foreign network platform transactions.

After listening to his cousin's lobbying, Lei Hua and his wife were tempted, so they spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy a "mining machine" that month and put it at home to mine "Ethereum". But after using it for a while, Lei Hua found that the "mining machine" was too powerful, and one "mining machine" consumed nearly 21 degrees of electricity every day. Seeing the number on the electric meter at home "snapping", Lei Hua felt distressed.

Lei Hua thought that no one lived in his dormitory at school, so he thought why not put the "mining machine" in the dormitory, so that he would not have to pay for the electricity bill himself.

The confused principal was dismissed for using nine mining machines to pay for electricity

Seeing that the output of one "mining machine" was too low, Lei Hua spent more than 40,000 yuan in three installments to buy seven more "mining machines" from his cousin between July 2017 and June 2018. Because the dormitory was too small to accommodate them, he placed all the newly purchased "mining machines" in the school's audio-visual classroom.
From July 2017 to July 2018, Lei Hua used eight mining machines he bought to connect to the school network and used the school's electricity to mine Ethereum, generating a total electricity bill of 14,714 yuan, all of which was reimbursed by the school.

Wang Zhipeng, the vice president of the school who shared an office with Lei Hua, was also eager to try his hand at Ethereum mining. In December 2017, Wang Zhipeng asked Lei Hua to help him buy an Ethereum mining machine. However, he could not bear the high power consumption, so he moved the mining machine to the school teaching room in January 2018.

In the physics laboratory on the second floor, he followed Lei Hua's example and connected to the school's Internet, using the school's electricity to "mine" Ethereum for personal gain.

After calculation, Wang Zhipeng used the Ethereum mining machine to generate electricity costs of 2,444 yuan. After Lei Hua's review and his approval, the electricity costs were all reimbursed by the school.

Nine high-power "mining machines" were running all day long, and the school circuits could not bear the load, almost causing a fire. They also greatly slowed down the Internet speed and seriously disrupted the teaching order. In October 2018, Lei Hua was given a serious warning within the party and was removed from his position as party branch secretary and principal; Wang Zhipeng was given a warning within the party. The funds involved in the case have been confiscated by the Jiahe County Commission for Discipline Inspection and the County Supervision Committee.