Economy BitCoin vs The MAGA Heartlands

[Siver!]

The loud hum sparking unrest in Trump's MAGA heartlands

Trump has said he wants to turn the US into the crypto-mining capital of the world - but that has real-world implications for many of his core voters

www.bbc.co.uk

For the last five years, a loud hum has been a continual backdrop to birdsong and the occasional barking dog in the village of Dresden, New York state.
Coming from the nearby Greenidge Generation power plant, which had been mothballed for years before, the sound has angered some local people.
"It's an annoyance," says Ellen Campbell, who owns a house on Seneca Lake a short distance away. "If I sit out by the lake, I would rather not hear that.
"We didn't sign up for the constant hum."
The issue here in Dresden, a village of about 300 people surrounded by winding country roads, single-track rail lines and farms growing grapes and hops, sounds like a familiar story about the tension between nature-loving locals and economic development.
But their annoyance is also a signal of something less expected – policies of US President Donald Trump meeting resistance from people in the rural areas whose votes drove his return to the White House.
And the cause? Bitcoin mining.
An energy-intensive process that relies on powerful computers to create and protect the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin mining has grown rapidly in the country over recent years. The current administration, unlike Joe Biden's, is intent on encouraging the industry.
Trump has said he wants to turn the US into the crypto-mining capital of the world, announcing in June 2024 that "we want all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in the USA". This has implications for rural communities throughout the US – many of whom voted for Trump.
Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation's grid.
The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.

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Resistance to Bitcoin mines extends to places with the biggest Trump support.
Cyndie Roberson was retired and unaware of the crypto industry until a Bitcoin mining operation moved to her small town in North Carolina in 2021. The locals banded together and managed to ban new Bitcoin developments in their area - but the existing one was allowed to stay and the bitterness of the fight made her decide to move south, to Gilmer County in Georgia.
There, Ms Roberson has campaigned against crypto mining in a region that is solidly pro-Republican. In the county where she lives, she says that around 1,000 people came to a public meeting to oppose a mine, which then wasn't allowed to operate.
Just north of Gilmer, the Fannin County Commission has enacted a ban on crypto mining, while a Georgian commission representing 18 primarily rural counties has published advice on how to restrict the development of Bitcoin mines.
"When you're in my backyard, when you're in my town, trying to wreck our property and our peace, people will tell you, it's a hard 'no'," says Ms Roberson.
Although 80% of local people backed Trump last November, that support doesn't appear to stop people opposing one of his key crypto goals.

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Local opposition is not Trump's only challenge. Could the sea, for example, be a better location for Bitcoin mining?
Mr Shapiro believes that, with miners looking for the lowest cost, they could turn to leftover renewable energy that can't be used by other applications. "Wind power in the ocean can't be used to power a city, but you can set up an offshore platform that captures offshore wind and tidal energy, and use that to mine Bitcoin – because there's not another buyer to use that energy, it's probably ultimately where Bitcoin mining operations move."
It could also be that in the cryptocurrency race, Bitcoin might not be the best bet. Read - who is an energy economist - is sceptical about the staying power of energy-intensive Bitcoin because he believes other more efficient alternatives are going to emerge.
With the White House egging on the industry, fights over Bitcoin mining will inevitably play out in smaller forums, in state and local governments and tiny places like Dresden.
But one constant in the short history of Bitcoin has been volatility. It might be boom times now – yet a downturn in the price, shifts in energy sources and changing crypto needs could fundamentally reshape the Bitcoin mining landscape, no matter how much Trump wants to keep it in the US.

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Storm's coming...?

And could Crypto inadvertently FORCE nations to become energy efficient, ie, GREEN?

Where do you sit on this one?

 

[Long Dark Blues]

Proof of Work is an out-dated consensus mechanism that has been been succesfully replaced by Proof of Stake and/or Proof of Reserve for cryptocurrencies and their block-chain implementations, especially if they have fully fleshed-our ecosystems and payment rails connecting to TradFi.