“Judge Reed O’Connor rejected MARA Holdings’ request in the federal Northern District of Texas for a temporary restraining order on an election for Mitchell Bend to incorporate as Texas’ newest city and regulate the company’s nearby Bitcoin mine… The Bitcoin mine, which MARA has owned for almost two years, has been a source of noise pollution that residents say has been the cause of a range of health issues including lack of sleep, vertigo, nausea and motion sickness.”
This sounds like they’re mining the bitcoin from the ground. This is just a datacenter churning pointless calculations for no real value, right? It’s not a mine. And if it produces noise, they’re doing it wrong.
Ever been in a data center? I started wearing full ear cover headphones to block the noise.
It’s a Noise Mine. They use machines to extract noise from the bowels of the earth.
I expect it’s a fossil fuel power plant making the noise.
Thousands of fans will produce a lot of noice you cant always hear. That noise you can’t hear will still damage your ears and affect you. A lot of these bitcoin mine data centres are just a shipping container or 2 with servers and minimal or no noise dampening.
Hard to think of anything more useless than a bitcoin “mine”.
And even less than useless, it is actively destructive.
Many mines are destructive. But most at least dig up something physical. Bitcoin mining is just pointless busy work to prove you did the most pointless busy work in order to get awarded the bitcoin. There’s nothing of actual value whatsoever.
The amount of energy and pollution wasted on creating nothing is mind boggling.
The very limited regulation makes for great pump and dump schemes, bribery, political corruption, etc.
A wildly unstable currency not backed by any government and can easily be stolen in vast sums. What could go wrong?
Remember that Bitcoin is still using the inherently wasteful “proof of work” pattern to incentive the necessary hash computations.
And that it’s less of a currency than it is a speculative security. Kind of like in-game currency for a MMO that allows real-money exchange, but without the game and somehow with even less stability or efficiency.
Ponzi scheme more than speculative asset or currency.
See half-life 2
You shouldn’t be allowed to do such environmentally destructive nonsense as running a “bitcoin mine”.
The Bitcoin mine, which MARA has owned for almost two years, has been a source of noise pollution that residents say has been the cause of a range of health issues including lack of sleep, vertigo, nausea and motion sickness.”
Fucking what? What do people think happens in a “bitcoin mine”??
Well, if it’s a data center with a colocated fossil-fuel power plant (and, being Texas, that’s likely), what happens is noise pollution and air pollution. The vertigo, nausea and motion sickness sound like bullshit, but other health issues are an expected outcome.
