“Mining”

I remain amazed at how using the term “mining” to discuss the utter bullshit that Bitcoin does just opens up rural America to a whole new era of exploitation. As it turns out, actually having mines next to your house, whether real mines or just burning the daily energy use of Switzerland to create random codes that might allow some drug dealers and terrorists to move their money around quasi-legally, is not great!

On a sweltering July evening, the din from thousands of computers mining for Bitcoins pierced the night. Nearby, Matt Brown, a member of the Arkansas legislature, monitored the noise alongside a local magistrate.

As the two men investigated complaints about the operation, Mr. Brown said, a security guard for the mine loaded rounds into an AR-15-style assault rifle that had been stored in a car.

“He wanted to make sure that we knew he had his gun — that we knew it was loaded,” Mr. Brown, a Republican, said in an interview.

The Bitcoin outfit here, 45 minutes north of Little Rock, is one of three sites in Arkansas owned by a network of companies embroiled in tense disputes with residents, who say the noise generated by computers performing trillions of calculations per second ruins lives, lowers property values and drives away wildlife.

Scores of the operations have popped up in recent years across the United States. When a mining computer lands on numbers that Bitcoin’s algorithm accepts, the payout is currently worth about a quarter-million dollars. The more computers an operation has, the better chance of earning the payout.

The industry is often criticized for its vast energy use — often a boon for the fossil-fuel industry — and noise is a common complaint. Though some elected officials like Mr. Brown and other Bitcoin operators in Arkansas have voiced support for the beleaguered residents, a new state law has given the companies a significant leg up.

The Arkansas Data Centers Act, popularly called the Right to Mine law, offers Bitcoin miners legal protections from communities that may not want them operating nearby. Passed just eight days after it was introduced, the law was written in part by the Satoshi Action Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Mississippi whose co-founder worked in the Trump administration rolling back Obama-era climate policies.

“The state of Arkansas has pulled off a surprise victory and become the first in the nation to pass the ‘Right to Mine’ #Bitcoin bill in both the House and Senate,” Dennis Porter, the fund’s chief executive, posted on social media when the law passed last April.

I am shocked that Trumpers would be interested in quasi-legal fake money schemes that screw over local residents without apology. Only the best people are involved in such schemes.

Meanwhile, no one has yet explained why cryptocurrency should even exist. Except for LoomCoin of course, that’s the most solid investment in the history of capitalism.