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

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/appalachian-town-told-bitcoin-mine-152255550.html

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

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.

The process relies on massive computers performing complex calculations - all while kept at a constant temperature by equally massive cooling fans - and that can get noisy.

The Limestone mine operates day and night, growing louder at night and on weekends when bitcoin's electricity-hungry computers can take advantage of down time and lower prices on the electricity grid and ramp up their algorithmic-solving power.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Interesting illustration of how Bitcoin is made.

Frankly, it seems to me like a form of madness.