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Every night, the nurse anesthetist Cheryl Shadden lies awake in her home in Granbury, Texas, listening to a nonstop roar. “It’s like sitting on the runway of an airport where jets are taking off, one after another,” she says. “You can’t even walk out on your back patio and speak to somebody five feet away and have them hear you at all.”
The noise comes from a nearby bitcoin mining operation, which set up shop at a power plant in Granbury last year. Since then, residents in the surrounding area have complained to public officials about an incessant din that they say keeps them awake, gives them migraines, and seemingly has caused wildlife to flee the region. “My citizens are suffering,” says Hood County Constable John Shirley.
Granbury is one of many towns across the U.S. feeling the negative impacts of bitcoin mining, an energy-intensive process that powers and protects the cryptocurrency. Those impacts include carbon and noise pollution, and increased costs on consumers’ utility bills. According to the New York Times, there are 34 large scale bitcoin mines across the U.S. In 2022, the crypto market tumbled, in part due to high-profile collapses of crypto companies like Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. But in 2023, prices rebounded once again, and mining companies decided to expand their operations in order to cash in, causing global energy consumption for mining to double, according to one study. Critics say that mining is causing both long-term environmental damage, due to its energy use, as well as local harm. “We’re at a loss here,” Granbury resident Shadden says. “We want our lives back.”
Bitcoin is so energy-intensive because it relies on a process known as proof-of-work. Rather than being overseen by a single watchdog, bitcoin is designed to disperse the responsibility of the network’s integrity to voluntary “miners” around the globe, who prevent tampering through a complex cryptographic process that consumes a vast amount of…
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