This reminds me of a fun story. Back in 2011, our then head of IT kept a server under his desk that nobody but me seemed to notice. It was there for at least a year. One day over lunch he let it slip that it was a bitcoin node, but insisted it wasn't actually mining.
I was at the office one night kinda late, and I walked around the corner to see him working on the server. He was installing what looked a lot like a graphics card. Sure. Not mining.
In the end, he never got caught. I recently looked him up on LinkedIn and he hasn't been working for over a year. I obviously don't know this for sure, but given what a bitcoin enthusiast he was, I would not at all be surprised if he made a fortune mining for free by stealing the company's money and also investing heavily.
Indeed, greed in cryptocurrency is a thing.
(Created a throwaway to protect the privacy of the guilty, even though they don't deserve it.)
Back of envelope suggests he was stealing $20k per year in power, probably not more than that. Considering this was 2011, the return on that $20k could have been gigantic. Reimbursing them would have been a drop in the bucket, if he could do it without outing himself...
Your envelope is more inflated than bitcoin itself. I am a miner, and i was a miner back in 2011. One of my rigs right now uses 923W with 6 high end graphics cards. That rig costs me ~$3/day * 365 = $1095.
Do you really think you can hide the amount of heat from anyone - my rigs are basically a furnace - and in 2011, I think I could probably melt steel =P The guy may have had a few cards in there, but $20k is absurd.
Well, he said a lot of graphics cards. I plugged in 20 at 1kwh each. Trying to charitably interpret OP's tone of outrage, which seemed misplaced to me.
I'd say $2000 would seem more likely, assuming it's some monster thing that draws 2KW when running flat out. 1 watt-year in the US costs around $0.75-$2.
I was at the office one night kinda late, and I walked around the corner to see him working on the server. He was installing what looked a lot like a graphics card. Sure. Not mining.
In the end, he never got caught. I recently looked him up on LinkedIn and he hasn't been working for over a year. I obviously don't know this for sure, but given what a bitcoin enthusiast he was, I would not at all be surprised if he made a fortune mining for free by stealing the company's money and also investing heavily.
Indeed, greed in cryptocurrency is a thing.
(Created a throwaway to protect the privacy of the guilty, even though they don't deserve it.)