Altcoin News: Students Using Free Electricity on Campuses for Mining

March 6, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

A study by Cisco showed that free electricity available on student campuses allowed these locations to become the second largest cryptocurrency “mining farm”.

Analysts investigated the scope of mining in various industries using Cisco Umbrella, which analyzes client network connections and tracks malware, including cryptocurrency mining.

It is reported that the campuses ranked second among the miners of cryptocurrency with a result of 22%. In the first place was the energy and utility sector, which accounted for 34%.

“You leave [the mining rig] running in your dorm room for four years, you walk out of college with a big chunk of change.” said Austin McBride, a Cisco researcher.

Thanks to free electricity, students avoid the associated costs of cryptocurrency mining, which makes it much more profitable.

“Mining difficulty for a lot of coins is very high right now — which means it costs more for electricity and internet than the profit you can produce from mining those coins. If you don’t have to pay for those costs, then you are in a really good spot for making money on the university’s dime.” added McBride.

Note that earlier, researchers at the Oak Ridge Institute of Ohio State said that Bitcoin mining consumes three times more energy than is necessary to extract an equivalent amount of gold in a dollar ratio.

Author: Marko Vidrih

Image credit pcmag.com