An Appalachian town was told a bitcoin mine would bring an economic boom. It got noise pollution and

[douglas9]

LIMESTONE, Tenn. — It started as a low hum one day last spring. Then it got louder, and soon some residents said the noise was like a jet engine idling on a nearby tarmac.

The unincorporated clutch of homes and churches at the base of the Appalachian Mountains offers expansive vistas of lush farmland, thick woods and towering ridges in all directions. Neighbors know one another. Most residents have family bonds spanning generations or moved to this tranquil patch to escape city noise.

Instead, the noise came to them in April last year when the Tennessee-based firm Red Dog Technologies opened a plant in Limestone to mine (or create) new bitcoin, the original and still-largest cryptocurrency.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/18/bitcoin-mining-noise-pollution-appalachia/

[paleotn]

1. Using gargantuan amounts of electricity to produce....

the preferred exchange for thieves and drug cartels. Bitcoin is nothing but a tech nut's fever dream. Ban it globally. Currency is the realm of nation states, not a tech bros.

[hlthe2b]

4. I agree. Whenever I point this out I get blasted by the condescending crew whose "defense" is always

that I'm just one of those "out-of-touch" Luddites or something of that nature.

I'm actually pretty informed on crypto and I refuse to turn a blind eye to the magnitude of problems it is creating.

[Fullduplexxx]

2. How do you mine for cryptocurrency? Isnt it virtual currency?

[Demovictory9]

3. My question too

[hlthe2b]

5. Here is one of the better articles/explanations

https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/crypto-mining

Like all aspects of cryptocurrency, the "mining" is virtual.