A Russian Engineer Fined for Mining Bitcoin Using Government Supercomputers

Denis Baykov, a Russian nuclear engineer at the nuclear center has been fined for using one of the country’s most powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoin at a top-secret nuclear lab in the closed city of Sarov.

The Sarov city court has fined Baykov 450,000 rubles (around $7,000) for mining cryptocurrencies using the government facilities. According to RIA Novosti news agency , Baykov was found guilty of illegally accessing computer information and violating computer operation rules.

Two other Sarov nuclear center engineers— Andrei Rybkin and Andrei Shatokhin — are awaiting sentencing, the court told RIA Novosti.

Baykov’s lawyer, Alexei Kovalyov, told state media that his clients had developed special mining software to avoid detection and they could mine some Bitcoins before getting caught.