the National Science Foundation (NSF) revealed that more than $8,000 (£4,760) worth of bitcoins had been generated from NSF-funded computers.
The researcher said he was conducting tests.
Equipment worth $150,000 (£89,230) at the government-backed organisation was used to mine the digital currency.
A member of the Harvard community was stripped of his or her access to the University’s research computing facilities last week after setting up a “dogecoin” mining operation using a Harvard research network.
The individual in question allegedly utilized the high-powered network that Harvard calls the “Odyssey cluster” to collect the coins.
The Odyssey cluster is a bunch of computers networked together in a way that allows fast data transfer between processors.