Readings for questions:

Richard pulledinto the employee lot and steered his shiny new sedan into a front-row spot. The office looked entirely different at night with the lot empty and only a handful of the offices illuminated. The new car was his first splurge since graduating from a graduate program a few years earlier. In spite of being in the field for a relatively short time, Richard had already moved up in the technology group and was one of two key system administrators at the company. He swiped his badge at the side entrance and heard the familiar click as the lock released. He worked his way up the dimly lit staircase to the server room on the tenth floor. As he moved toward the end of the hallway, Richard could smell the aroma of burgers and fries, his boss' staple meal on these overnight systems upgrade projects. He wasn't sure which was harder for him to toleratethe greasy odor of the food or the presence of his boss, Steve.

Crypto-holic

Steve had been working for the company for several decades. The only thing rivaling his expertise was his propensity to complain. Steve's rants focused mainly on the incompetence of company executives and the salary increase he thought he deserved. When Richard grudgingly joined him for lunch a few times a week, Steve tended to go on and on about a variety of tech-related topics. However, lately Steve seemed interested in the surging popularity and value of cryptocurrencies. Hackers, college students, and tech startups were not only buying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, but they were setting up computer "rigs" to mine them.

Richard didn't quite understand all of the technical nuances of Steve's tirades, but he surmised that cryptocurrency mining is based on computers compiling the most recent transactions for that type of cryptocurrency and performing complex mathematical calculations. When a "miner's" system successfully contributed to the update of this digital ledger, they received payment in that type of cryptocurrency. As the value of bitcoin increased, for example, more and more people were investing in top-of-the-line computer hardware to increase the odds that their mining system could successfully compete against other miners, helping them accrue as much cryptocurrency as possible.

Richard was especially interested to learn that the demand for these powerful mining rigs was dramatically increasing. High-end graphics processing cards were becoming hard to find, much to the chagrin of the gaming community.1 Even more interesting was the pilgrimage of crypto-miners to Iceland due to the naturally cold climate that made it easier to keep their systems cool and the geothermal and hydroelectric resources that kept electricity prices low.2 In fact, the power consumed by mining rigs in Iceland was exceeding that used by the country's residents!

Richard exchanged pleasantries with Steve, received his instructions for the night, and retreated to his office adjacent to the server room. They would begin rolling out a number of system updates over the next several hours, but Steve insisted on finishing his dinner before starting. Richard opted to cut through the server room, even though it was not the most direct route to his office. As he entered the room, he noticed more activity and noise than usual. "Better check on this," he thought as he unlocked the door to his office. He pulled up a couple monitoring tools he used to manage the servers; everything seemed normal. He then ran a few scripts he had developed on his own, and within a few minutes he found himself staring at his monitor in shock. He slowly pushed back his keyboard and rolled his chair away from the terminal.

Steve had taken his fixation with cryptocurrency mining to a new level. He was not just talking about it, he was actually doing iton the company's machines! Richard had discovered a rogue program that Steve had installed on all of the servers. It was programmed to run only after hours when employees were home and the processing capabilities of the servers were largely underutilized. This explained the frenzy of light and noise Richard had noticed in the server roomthe servers were running the mining program. Steve had clearly underestimated Richard's technical abilities because he had done little to conceal his program.

Richard wasn't sure what to do with his discovery. It was not like Steve was overtly harming the companythe systems were just sitting around idling at night anyway, right? And even if running this program was putting wear and tear on the servers, they were replaced regularly and almost never failed before the replacement cycle began. The only thing it might cost the company was some extra power, but who would know or care about an uptick in the power bill, especially when the company was rapidly growing and regularly adding new staff and offices?

Beyond all of that, Steve was the last person Richard wanted to confront or make angry. He could seriously affect Richard's long-term employment at the company and his job prospects elsewhere. Steve was very well-connected in the tech world. On the other hand, if someone else figured out what was going on, would Richard be accused of complicity? He let out a groan and kept pondering what to do.

3. It's unlikely the company has a policy against using too much CPU power; this wasn't even an issue before crypto-mining became popular. Even if Richard turned Steve in, could steve simply claim he wasn't violating corporate policy? How might Steve justify his mining activities and avoid being fired?

4. Suppose steve goes to his boss and tells her about his idea. He reminds her that the main corporate office pays all the power bills, so they could just keep the profits within the IT group. Essentially, they could increase their departmental budget by "efficiently" using existing resources. Steve could covertly skim a small % off the top for himself and be protected from getting fired at the same time. He might even get a raise. How would you feel if you were the CEO of the company and found out about this sort of crypto-mining activity? How would you respond to the IT group?