I think crypto mining take a massive amount of electricity. My understanding is that it is the single biggest expense of this type of business. I have not read the articles but can imagine they would put great strain on the system.

The series of books about a fictional Wyoming game warden named Joe Pickett is one of my guilty pleasures. The author recently wrote a book where bitcoin mines were a big part of the plot. IMO, the author did a good job with the research and I learned a lot when I read the book.

They really do sound awful.

https://www.cjbox.net/storm-watch

They are a huge issue and often set up in poor and/or remote areas where they get established before the issues are known and pushback begins. Once they are there, it seems little can be done in many cases. There is one that I've read about in a small community in NC, up in the mountains. Crypto is cryptic to me. I steer clear.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/us/north-carolina-crypto-mine-noise-weir-wxc/index.html

What’s outrageous is that the mining sites take precedence over residents during power outages. I can’t even wrap my mind around that.

Whose palms are being greased?

All bolding mine:

“ US Bitcoin miners produced as much carbon pollution as 3.5 million gasoline-powered cars, The New York Times reported in April.”

.

“Lawmakers in Georgia and Kentucky have offered mining companies financial incentives to set up shop in their states. Ercot, Texas’ power grid operator, offers mining firms energy credits.”

I’ve had 2 different, knowledgable people take the time to patiently explain bitcoin to me. I walked away both times not understanding it. And why should there be so much noise?

edit: yes yes, I know the noise comes from the cooling fans. There should be quieter cooling fans.

The servers generate massive amounts of heat, and must be kept cool to function properly, so air conditioning use is big part of their energy consumption.

And the TX power grid is independent from other states, so if there's a failure or shortage, they can't borrow from other states like the rest. TX's rate structure is also not consumer friendly, to say the least.

I’ve had 2 different, knowledgable people take the time to patiently explain bitcoin to me. I walked away both times not understanding it.

Same, Maddielee.

Ohmygoodness, I'm shocked! I've been to Granbury -it's a darling small town, with a quaint town center filled with places to lunch and shop. There is also a lake community there. Gosh, I want to drive over and hear it for myself.

And yeah, I have a SW Engineer son, with a masters in CS, and he hasn't been able to explain bitcoin to me in a way I can understand, LOL.

Best, have you been to Babe’s in Granbury? Oh my goodness. It’s so good!

We might head out there the weekend of the 4th …. they always have a fun weekend festival and fireworks.

I had not heard about the noise issue, but watching that story brought flashbacks to Erin Brokovich and Zone of Interest. Not exactly Chamber of Commerce material -- and Granbury doesn't deserve that. There are additional sites in central Texas as I understand it. To address the energy grid concerns, they have an arrangement to stop and sell back power -- at the cost of all the rest of us. As if ERCOT jacking the price up to an insane amount when no one knew about it until after the fact was going to cause conservation. Add cryto miners selling back in times of crisis at a higher price -- it just gets worse and worse. There was a recent story in the paper saying legislators are saying they are just now learning crypto is a big power user. What? That's been common knowledge to anyone paying the slightest attention for a decade or more.

All you really need to know is that crypto is basically a sort of pyramid scheme. Savvy people on board early in the game can make and have made huge sums of money, and a lot of the latecomers are left holding the bag, as it were. The biggest failing, according to experts, is that it's not backed up by anything, unlike the US dollar and other currencies. A whole bunch went poof not that long ago, and some people lost everything.

I learned a lot about crypto from this podcast series:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/01-welcome-to-crypto-island/id1614253637?i=1000554019226

The people running the servers are also among the few actual profiteers, IMO.

I thought bitcoin was an intangible commodity. I have zero understanding of it (obviously). What, then, is it made from?

Jilly, I've been to Babe's in Granbury. And, in Sanger-closer to the Oklahoma line. LOL Babe's is really good!

I LOVE the town of Granbury! I have cousins who live there and the last time I was there, about a year ago-I hadn't heard any of this about the bitcoin mining plant. I'll have to ask them about it.

Bunny, you are absolutely correct that it is an intangible commodity and as carolb said, not backed by the US government or anything concrete.

Bitcoin mining is essentially running very expensive super computers, which use a lot of energy to run and to cool, to solve extremely complicated math problems. Being the first to solve the problem earns the miner bitcoin. These math problems form the foundation of the cryptocurrency network that records the financial transactions and ownership.

I believe the noise from these facilities are from high velocity fans used to cool the computers. Similar to how an in office server room can be pretty loud from the fans cooling those computers. Obviously this is at a significantly larger scale.

I feel terribly sad for the communities that likely find little to no benefit from having these bitcoin mining operations. Probably some amount of tax dollars going into the community, but I doubt that's worth the cost in noise pollution and resource demand (including electricity). Probably a few people making profit at the cost of a community.

This is a decent explanation of bitcoin, cyrpto generally, and blockchain technology. https://www.bankrate.com/investing/what-is-bitcoin-mining/#basics

I think the issue with bitcoin mining is that zoning has not caught up with tech. These facilities need to be sited on much larger plots of land so that they are very far away from any inhabitants and not audible.

Another Granbury admirer here, 🙋🏻‍♀️

I have close friends from there who moved away but have now retired back there. I’ll have to ask them about the bitcoin mining going on there.

DH and I welcomed the new millenium at a party on a mountain top (or what passes for a mountain in that part of TX. Most others would call it a big hill. 😁) with a view of Granbury. Good memories!

It sounds like the owners of these crypto mining operations are playing the disingenuous card - What? We didn't realize this would be so noisy!

And the one near the Great Smokey Mountains National Park - how does it affect the wildlife. But people have the same argument regarding wind turbines - noise, affecting wildlife and visual ugliness. But at least they create power as opposed to sucking it up.

My last house had a beautiful seven acres of hills and woods behind it. We had such a pretty view (we were way above it and could also see city lights at night). We weren’t out in the middle of nowhere, there were houses on acreage all around that seven acre plot.

We were in the works to buy it, the owner had verbally accepted our offer — but then she was contacted by a natural gas company. She took their offer over ours. They immediately bulldozed the land and put gravel down on the entire acreage.

For years, we dealt with fracking right behind our fence. The noise and vibrations were horrendous, it ran 24/7, stadium lights at night, huge tower overlooking our backyard. After fracking came the wells and semis 24/7 to load up on gas. It was a nightmare.

I know well what these people are going through. We had noise and pollution studies done (it was scary seeing the infrared images of what we were breathing), I was contacting news stations and citizen groups, doing what I could to fight it.

Texas is 100% corporate (donor) friendly and residents have no power. If a gas company wants to take your land and you refuse, they use eminent domain to steal it.

I doubt anything will be done to help the Granbury residents.

Jilly, that's awful and so sad! Your description of your last house is so similar to ours, somewhat. We have some woods below us - to one side. But we are above our little city. While we have a beautiful mountain view (Smokies) from our front, we also overlook our little city and I do love the night view of twinkling lights! I would hate to lose that!

Blfenton, I haven't even heard about the mine near the Smokies! I'm going to have to look that up.

It was awful. I’m not anti-drilling, but it can be done more responsibly. There was a two hundred acre plot of land they were looking at a few miles away, with no homes nearby. They decided to drill on the seven acres surrounded by homes instead.

deegw...thanks...I put the book "Storm Watch" on hold. Looks gooooooood!

I own Bitcoin stock. I purchased it when it was $11 a share, it's been as high as $65 a share.

My husbands boss's family purchased 2 Bitcoin machines to mine bitcoin....at a cost of $30k. They got back $7k before they were no longer making money and disconnected them.

I agree...they need quieter fans. I believe paper money will "go away" in the next 20 years.

And then there is the guy who has a bazillion dollars in cryptocurrency but can’t remember his password to access it. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.5875363/this-man-owns-321m-in-bitcoin-but-he-can-t-access-it-because-he-lost-his-password-1.5875366. A Reddit update from 8 months ago said there is a team of hackers who thinks they can unlock the password but the owner won’t let them try.

That’s wild, bb.

I love this story about Joe the Pigeon (saw the link after reading your link):

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.5875363/a-pigeon-named-joe-was-spared-from-a-grisly-fate-because-he-s-not-american-1.5875523

We have friends who paid for their new house totally in bitcoin a few months ago.

My husband has some also-but I only halfway know how it works and let him do his thing LOL

I only partly knew a little about bitcoin. These articles have been enlightening in many ways. I had no idea there were bitcoin mining sites, nor what they were used to do. Pretty scary really, and I have to wonder who really benefits from all this. As usual, the people who have to live near these nightmares are the ones who suffer.